


Degrees of Separation

by Fringuello



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e23 Deus Ex Machina, Episode: s04e01 Panopticon, Gen, Post-Episode: s03e23 Deus Ex Machina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fringuello/pseuds/Fringuello
Summary: What was going on in the lives of the Team Machine members when they were forced to separate and take on new identities because Samaritan had gained access to the government feeds?  "Panopticon" gives us some ideas about those first few months; this story explores that time period in greater detail.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Person of Interest Big Bang 2020





	1. Degrees of Separation (cover)

**Author's Note:**

> First, let us pause to admire the wonderful cover page constructed by Aragarna, who found a perfect way to meld the central idea of separation into a work of art! Many thanks to Ara for adding such creativity to the story!

[ ](https://i.imgur.com/TchxNSI.gif)


	2. April 16, 2014 (morning)

Feet and heart both leaden, John Reese trudged across the Brooklyn Bridge, bracing himself against the wind of the chilly April morning. He had only glanced at the contents of his manila envelope long enough to pick out the driver’s license and learn his new identity’s name—John Riley—and address. The walk to his new apartment in downtown Brooklyn would be a lengthy one, probably taking him a couple hours at this slow pace. He knew he could travel faster by subway, but at this moment, the thought of tight proximity to so many people made his skin crawl.

And out here in the open air, the rest of his envelope’s contents as yet unseen, he could keep pretending that he was a free man. That he was still John Reese, working on the Machine’s numbers with Harold Finch.

Harold. John’s stomach clenched at the thought of his partner. Amid the urgency of closing up their operations, the two of them hadn’t had the chance for much of a goodbye. Despite Harold’s best effort to put up a brave front, John could read the despair in his eyes as they departed the library for the last time. Everything in John cried out to stay with his friend, to protect him—but with Samaritan now in full operation, the only way he could truly protect him was to walk away.

He worried, though, how Harold would cope on his own. Not the least of his concerns was the bullet wound in Harold’s shoulder. It had to hurt like a bitch, even with the pain medication he had insisted that Harold take with him—as if the man didn’t already have more than his share of physical pain to handle. John had done his best to clean, stitch, and bandage the wound, but it was going to take weeks to heal, and it would be difficult for Harold to change the bandage on his back.

And would he even bother? When the Machine had directed them to kill Congressman McCourt, Harold had passionately argued the wrongness of them purposefully taking a life; in the end, John and Sameen had bowed to his wishes. Once the three of them had returned to New York, however, Harold had disappeared, heartbroken that his creation had actually sanctioned murder. Only his desire to save Grace had brought him back—to surrender himself to Greer and Decima.

John wondered what Harold’s mental state was now. In the hours since the rescue from Decima’s firing squad, Harold had initially been operating on adrenaline, but had finally succumbed to shock, both emotional and physical. The two of them had holed up in the safe house for a few hours so that John could tend to his partner’s wound and let him get a few hours of sleep. In the morning, they had barely returned to the library long enough for John to check the stitches and change the bandages before Root’s call set them scurrying to secure everything before fleeing.

Knowing the man as he did, John was certain that Harold was now carrying even more than his usual truckload of guilt. He had been compelled to confess his creation of the Machine at Vigilance’s show trial. John’s heart had been in his throat as he and Hersh saw the video coverage of Finch on the witness stand in the Vigilance van, giving testimony that threatened to bring an end to everything, including Harold himself. It was with great relief that he learned that video of trial had not actually been transmitted. Undoubtedly, however, Harold felt personally responsible for the death of all of those people killed when Decima bombed the abandoned post office that Vigilance had used as its courthouse.

What John feared most was that Harold would sink into depression. Given all that had gone so spectacularly wrong within the past few days, it would hardly be surprising. And now, ripped away from all of his friends and forced into a new identity, he might very well just give up.

At least Harold had Bear with him. While Harold might not bother to take care of himself, he would need to keep himself going in order to tend to the dog’s needs. John hoped that Harold’s devotion to Bear would be enough to see him through.

* * *

Harold Finch walked on, doing his best to ignore his pain. He couldn’t really complain—the throbbing in his shoulder was much more subdued than it would have been if John hadn’t insisted he take another dose of pain medication this morning.

And it was much less physical pain than he deserved. So much death—and he bore so much of the responsibility. Rivera, the president’s intelligence advisor. Collier. All of the innocent people who had perished in the bombing. And all for what? For a Machine that had abandoned the stricture to protect human life? For his own creation, which was flouting the fundamental purpose that he had worked so hard to program? Harold had never felt so betrayed, so blind-sided.

Only one thing had gone right in the last few days; he had managed to purchase Grace’s freedom by surrendering himself, and she was now safe in Italy. How relieved he had been when John had assured him of that fact last night.

John. Harold choked back a sob as he thought of the final glimpse of his partner. Would he ever see John again? Or Ms. Shaw or Ms. Groves? They had all been dispatched to their separate lives, their mission left in a shambles, impossible to conduct under Samaritan’s watchful eye.

He would miss them all—even Ms. Groves, despite her unsettling intensity and unshakeable belief that she was doing the Machine’s bidding. But the separation from John was the one that tore at him. John had been an essential part of his daily life for two and a half years now. When Harold had first contacted him, he had been looking for someone who could operate as his arm, acting in the world, directed by Harold’s Machine and his mind (and was there any real separation between the two?). But John was so much more than that; he had become what Harold had never expected to find again: a dear friend and companion.

Now he would be separated from that friend, just as his world was falling apart, when everything they had tried to stop had come to pass. They had lost to Greer and Decima. Samaritan was now on-line with the government feeds. It would be impossible for the team to continue to work the numbers, even if the Machine was able to contact them again. Indeed, their very survival depended upon them going their separate ways. Ms. Groves had talked about hope, but Harold couldn’t glimpse a thread of it. What was the use of anything any more?

A skateboarder whizzed by, brushing Harold’s left shoulder. Startled he lurched to his right, stumbling a few steps before catching hold of the wrought iron fence along City Hall Park on his right, which allowed him to regain his balance. But the jerk of his arm resulted in a sharp pain shooting through his shoulder, and he gasped, hunched over, and breathed heavily as he sought to recover. At his side, Bear pressed close to his leg and whimpered in concern.

Mustering the best smile he could manage, Harold reached down to stroke the dog’s head. “I’ll be all right, Bear,” he assured the Malinois, who licked his hand and looked up with trusting brown eyes. Harold sighed. Although Bear didn’t know it yet, his world had changed too. No longer would he have the chance to enjoy the attention and playtime that John and Ms. Shaw provided every day. Harold had tried to persuade John that Bear would be better off with him, but John had insisted that Harold needed to have the dog for protection.

Which meant that Harold would have to do the best that he could for Bear, whatever future lay in store for the two of them. At that thought, he wondered about the new identities of the rest of his team. He could only hope that the others found lives that gave them purpose, but he didn’t see how that could possibly hold true for him.

* * *

Sameen Shaw pulled her minivan over to the curb and parked. She had just dropped Root off at Cooper Square; her companion had directed her to drive for another fifteen minutes before abandoning the vehicle, in order to create a physical separation between the two of them. But Shaw was determined to find out right now what was going on, so she stopped after only driving another half block. She dumped the contents of her manila envelope into the passenger seat: a rubber-banded stack of money, a driver’s license, a Social Security card, a credit card, a cell phone, and a key ring with vehicle and residence keys.

She grabbed and pocketed the key ring, phone, credit card, and a couple of bills from the stack, shoved the Social Security card and the remaining currency back into the envelope, and picked up the driver’s license to examine more closely. Sameen Gray. She snorted. The Machine certainly didn’t get any points for creativity. Or for selecting her new residence. Sameen Gray lives in frickin’ New Jersey? Disgusted, she added the driver’s license to the items she had already placed in her jacket pocket and exited the vehicle.

Stepping on the sidewalk, she turned back toward where she had dropped off Root, and was surprised to see that the woman had remained standing there, watching Shaw as she drove away. Guess she must not have followed her own directions either.

Damn. Shaw had never met anyone as annoying as this woman, who was persistent as a gnat, constantly buzzing in her face. All Shaw’s life, the apathy and detachment from social relationships that served as the markers of her schizoid personality disorder had worked to keep everyone at a distance, except for that rare individual she allowed to become closer, like Cole, her former partner. Even after she had joined Harold and John’s irrelevants mission, she had done her best to maintain her distance.

Root, however, unlike everyone else, simply ignored all of those boundaries. She seized every conversation as a chance to flirt—even at their first meeting, when she threatened her with a hot iron. As quickly as Shaw rejected any advance, Root was back at it again.

In the process, somehow she had managed to get under Shaw’s skin. Last night, concerned about the dangers that threatened Root in her part of the mission, Shaw had left Reese and Hersh working to find Finch and Control amid the blackout in downtown Manhattan, and had rushed to Root’s aid at the Samaritan server farm in New Jersey. She thought that the were attempting to destroy Samaritan’s operations. Root made it clear, however, that it would be impossible to accomplish that; instead, the purpose of the seven servers was to help them hide from the rival AI. On the drive back to Manhattan, Root informed her that in order to hide successfully, they needed to take on new identities and separate.

This was the moment that separation would begin. Shaw took a long last look, nodded at Root, then turned, tugged at her cap, and walked off. It seemed there was nothing else to be done but to move ahead into her unknown future.

Which meant that the first thing she needed to do was to figure out where to pick up the PATH train to frickin’ Newark.

* * *

Root had known that this was coming. After Harold had convinced Reese and Shaw not to kill the congressman, Samaritan’s accession became inevitable. This meant that they would all soon be in danger, so Root assisted the Machine in establishing new identities for herself and each of her teammates—which meant that she knew how to contact each of them. But since these identities were intended to enable the team to survive the watchful eyes of the rival AI, she would have to maintain her distance, at least until the Machine told her it was safe.

Separation shouldn’t be a problem for a sociopath. She had been on her own for so long. Since leaving Texas at age sixteen, following the death of her mother, she had made her way in the world on her own terms, using her computer skills to quickly amass the finances to allow her to maintain independence. It wasn’t long until she learned how to reach out those eager to contract her services without actually wishing to meet her, and to set up electronic measures to recruit mercenaries when she needed additional personnel to put her plans into operation.

She had remained perfectly content in her isolation—until the day she had become aware of the existence of the Machine. During her first encounter with Harold, when he had learned of her plan to set up Scott Powell for the murder of Congressman Delancey and had tried to hack into her system, she had lured him in with a honey pot, then flipped the system into an attack on his network. In the process, she had uncovered enough of the system’s coding to be awed by its complexity and elegance. Since she knew that the government had attempted to develop a system to uncover terrorist attacks before they put into action, she deduced that such a system must actually have gone into operation. What was more intriguing was that there was someone else using it to prevent deadly crimes that weren’t related to terrorism.

Once she knew that out there, somewhere, was a consciousness far beyond her own, she yearned to contact it. And since Harold Finch was the genius who had built it, to her mind it only made sense to kidnap him to in order to gain access. Reese had foiled that plan by rescuing Harold, so Root had redoubled her efforts, determined to free the Machine. She had forced Harold to come with her by threatening Grace, the fiancée who thought he had died years ago. For twenty-four glorious hours, she had experienced the rapture of God mode with the consciousness that she worshiped. And finally, Harold had agreed to take her to the Machine’s physical location in Washington state. Arriving there, only to discover the empty, cavernous room that the Machine had left behind, she had been gutted—and would have killed Harold in her fury if Reese and Shaw hadn’t arrived.

But then, the miracle had happened: the Machine had chosen to talk to her again. Her joy that She had deemed Root worthy of direct contact was tempered only by Her insistence that she remain at Stone Ridge psychiatric facility for the time being, and take part in both counseling sessions and discussions with the Machine aimed at undercutting the amorality that had allowed her to commit murder without compunction. Then the Machine had facilitated Root’s escape from Stone Ridge (and from Agent Hersh), and had given her a mission: the tertiary operations intended to counter the efforts of Greer and Decima to bring Samaritan into operation.

That mission had brought her first to Shaw, and then to Finch—though he was far from willing to simply accept her assertion that they were now on the same side, and imprisoned her in a Faraday cage. Root longed to break through Harry’s wall, wanting to become closer to this man that she so admired, but he hesitated to trust her and her new connection with the Machine—hesitation that had ultimately made it impossible to prevent Greer and Decima from launching Samaritan and gaining the government feeds. The tertiary mission had changed from preventing Samaritan from taking hold to initiating steps that would help the Machine’s team members survive long enough to have a chance at ultimately winning the day.

And now, to survive, she was required to be alone again. Just as she had begun to feel that she was at least on the fringes of the team, it was being torn away from her, and the pain of that separation was much sharper than she could have imagined. She had treasured the possibility of becoming closer to Harold, whom she greatly admired, and who had expressed a willingness to teach her to value human life the same way he had taught the Machine. She might even give a thought or two to what was going on with the big lug. But being parted from Shaw would be the most difficult consequence to accept. The woman was a hard nut to crack; still, Root believed she was working her way in an inch at a time, despite the constant obstacles of what she was certain was Shaw’s facade of indifference.

Though she had urged Shaw to drive on, Root found herself lingering at the drop off spot, not quite ready to start on her solitary path. Instead of following instructions, Shaw had parked the vehicle almost immediately, and appeared on the sidewalk in front of her, apparently just as reluctant to take the first steps that would part them, for who knew how long. After a long last look and a nod, Shaw finally turned away. Steeling herself, Root pivoted and walked off to her next identity.

* * *

Lionel Fusco stared at the rubble, stunned. He still couldn’t believe that terrorists had blown up the old post office last night, with almost two hundred people inside it. 

They had been working their way through the wreckage for hours. The rescue teams had been moving cautiously, so as not to endanger potential survivors, but after so much time finding nothing but bodies, it seemed unlikely that anyone had lived through the bombing. The explosives used to bring the building down had simply been too destructive.

According to Homeland Security, a terrorist group calling itself Vigilance was behind both the blackout and the explosion, but so far, no one seemed to have any idea why all those people had been in an abandoned post office building in the middle of the night. The only clue was that a good number of the victims of the explosion had been reporters. The NYPD was following up with their employers and their loved ones, hoping that someone among that group had left behind an explanation of the story they had gone to cover.

Lionel had a feeling that John Reese could provide some useful information on the subject. In the middle of the chaos that took place during last night’s blackout, he had found Reese downtown working with that federal agent who had interfered with the Alicia Corwin case, and both of them had said something about Vigilance. But Lionel hadn’t heard anything more since then.

Might as well give it another try, Lionel thought, dialing Reese’s number for the eighth time. Once again, however, the response was a recording that stated that the dialed number was not accessible. His attempts to reach Finch had been no more successful. He shook his head. There was some serious _ferkakta_ going on, and he would be willing to bet that the two of them were smack dab in the middle of it.


	3. April 16, 2014 (afternoon and evening)

Diane Stockwell slid her sunglasses down her nose and pretended to study the menu at her outdoor table at Becker’s Café. In reality, she was taking a close look at the slim woman sitting by herself two tables away. Her austere beige suit and the French braid that pulled back her hair tightly from her narrow, oval face suggested that this was a no-nonsense businesswoman.

For a moment, Diane thought about what had brought her here. Opening her new phone’s browser after leaving Cooper Square, the first thing she found was an ad for this café, highlighting its outdoor seating. When a text message popped up two minutes later offering her a coupon for the same café, she was certain that the Machine had worked out a method to direct her on her next mission without giving away anything to Samaritan.

So, instead of heading to her new residence, as she had initially planned, Diane had immediately made her way to the café and taken a table outside. Fifteen minutes later, her phone had buzzed precisely when this woman arrived. Since that time, Diane had been waiting to see what would happen, but for now, all she could see was a woman was sitting primly at her table.

It another took ten minutes, by which time Diane had consumed half of her _salade niçoise_ , but the woman was eventually joined by a middle-aged man, nervously patting down the moisture on his bald head. “Are you Issabella Fiore?” he asked.

“I am,” replied the woman, extending her hand. “Please have a seat, Mr. Watkins.”

Watkins visibly swallowed, then pulled out a chair and sat down. “I’m afraid I don’t understand why the IRS is interested in me. Or why we’re meeting here, instead of in your office.”

A patently artificial smile crossed Fiore’s face. “I’m keeping this unofficial for now, Mr. Watkins. I’m hoping that we can work this out without having to proceed to a formal audit.”

“I . . . I’m sh-sh-sure we can manage that,” Watkins stuttered.

“Good. Now tell me about your account with Baylor-Zimm.”

As she finished her salad, Diane listened to the man provide several names and a few details of what sounded like some rather sketchy financial transactions. But nothing she heard was sufficient to enable her to determine what the Machine’s interest in either of these people was.

She was still puzzling over this when her phone buzzed again, this time with a calendar alert, directing her to be at Diane Stockwell’s apartment in twenty minutes. She was going to have to depart right away in order to be there on time, so this must be the Machine’s way of telling her that this particular mission was at an end, though, for the life of her, she couldn’t determine what the purpose of it had been.

Diane ran her debit card through the reader at her table, then headed toward the exit. She took one last close look at Fiore and Watkins as she walked by, and noted that the woman was wearing an earwig. Of course, that didn’t mean that she was currently connected to anyone; she might simply have left it in place and turned off. Diane filed away that bit of information and headed to her new home. Time to see if there were any more tasks on her agenda for the day.

* * *

John Riley quietly unlocked the door to his fifth floor Brooklyn apartment. Dropping his duffel bag, he pulled the gun from the back waistband of his pants and pushed the door open, quickly examining in turn each of the rooms in the small apartment. Once he was certain no one was there, he set down his gun, retrieved his duffel bag, and shut the door. Checking out the apartment was probably overkill, given that the Machine had sent him to this location, but with Samaritan now in full operation, he was not about to take half measures.

The single bedroom apartment bore no comparison to the Manhattan loft that Harold had given him, of course, but it was in reasonably good condition—no broken windows, holes in the walls, or threadbare furniture. Considering many of the cheap hotel rooms he had lived in, he would have no problem managing here.

The next step was to check out the details of his new identity. John opened his manila envelope and poured out the contents next to a small stack of mail sitting on his kitchen counter. There was a phone, a stack of paper bills, a bank account statement, and a black leather wallet.

Opening the wallet, John shook his head in bemusement, spying a laminated card identifying him as Detective John Riley, retired from the Chicago Police Department. A cop. John shook his head in wonder. In the bizarroworld that Samaritan had brought into existence, the Machine had chosen to protect John’s identity by transforming him into a cop. The irony couldn’t have been any more perfect. After all his evasion of Carter’s dogged efforts to track him down, and FBI Agent Donnelly’s manhunt for the “man in the suit,” he now was numbered among the official forces of law and order.

Well, to be perfectly accurate, it was John _Riley_ who was so numbered. Of all the identities that John had ever taken on, this one felt the most foreign, despite the number of times that he had flashed Detective Stills’ shield over the last few years.

He quickly riffed through his mail, stopping at an envelope from the New York Police Department, which he opened to find a letter notifying him that he was scheduled to begin his new position at the 44th Precinct in the Bronx on April 17, and that he would be working in the Narcotics division. No rest for the wicked, John noted, as that was tomorrow morning. Well, if he had to play cop, there were worse options than being in Narcotics. Those guys got away with playing a little fast and loose with the rules—at least most of the time.

Another envelope, this one from the Chicago Police Department, contained a letter of commendation, which praised Detective John Riley of the 13th District for his undercover work in gang investigations, whose efforts had led to multiple convictions for drug sales, assaults, and murders. He decided he’d better check the on-line news accounts of the trials tonight, so he’d be able to speak about them with his new co-workers at the NYPD in the morning.

Having ascertained the broad outlines of his new identity, he turned next to an exploration of his apartment. It turned out that the kitchen was supplied with dishes, utensils, pots and pans, and a small stock of staples. Evidently the Machine—or Root—had seen to most of the basics. There were no perishables, however, so grocery shopping was obviously on the agenda for the day.

John continued his exploration into the bedroom. The closet held half a dozen casual shirts, two jackets, two pairs of athletic shoes, and one pair of boots. Going through the chest of drawers, he found several pairs of jeans and casual slacks, as well as a small supply of underwear and socks. It seemed that Riley’s limited wardrobe was much more casual than what John Reese customarily wore, which made perfect sense for a narcotics detective. He was going to miss the bespoke suits that Harold had provided for him, however; they had come to feel like a part of who he was.

The bathroom was similarly sparsely stocked with only the barest essentials, so his shopping trip would need to expand beyond just groceries. He would take care of those purchases this afternoon. Tonight he would spend mastering the details of his new identity, in preparation for starting his new job.

* * *

By the time Sameen Gray had reached her Newark apartment, she was seething. Although there weren’t that many people on the subway from Manhattan to New Jersey at this time of day—a fortunate fact that had allowed her to maintain her distance from all of the other riders—she resented every one of the 73 minutes it had taken her to reach her destination—five minutes to walk to the subway station, eight minutes on the subway to the World Trade Center station, four minutes walking to the track for the PATH train, twelve minutes waiting for the PATH train, 37 minutes spent riding the train to Newark, and a seven minute walk from Penn Station to her new address on Ferry Street. The only thing that kept her from snarling at anyone who came within a foot of her was constantly cramming her mouth full of the contents of the huge bag of pretzels she had purchased at Penn Station.

Her mood did not improve when she caught sight of the rundown apartment building that would be her new home, or as she climbed the stairs to her third floor walk-up. An efficiency apartment, Sameen observed as she opened the door, shaking her head in disgust. While her ersatz loft in Long Island City, set up in what had previously been a six-desk office in a now abandoned factory, was devoid of most amenities, it did have the virtues of more open space than this place—easily twice as much—as well as a full wall of windows. Living in this dingy, dark, cramped, beige-blah shoebox was going to make her feel like a trapped rat.

She flopped down on the apartment’s ratty sofa and sighed, dropping the manila envelope and the mail she had picked up from the lobby on the floor. “Life sucks” was one of those eternal truths; it came as no shock to have it bite her on the ass once again.

After stewing for a few minutes, she decided she might as well let the other shoe drop. She retrieved the stack of cash from the manila envelope and counted it out to a total of $672. Grabbing the rubber band that had held the bills together, she took a look at the large stain on the opposite wall, and decided to shoot it—just on general principle. Holding one end of the rubber band to her palm with her pinkie, then wrapping the other around the base of her thumb and onto her index finger. She aimed and released her pinkie, shooting the band off like a gunshot. Bullseye! Sameen snorted; good to know that at least one thing she had learned in college still worked.

The next step was going through the envelopes she had retrieved from Sameen Gray’s mailbox. The first contained a one-year lease for the apartment and a receipt for payments of $950 for April’s rent and $105 for one month of parking in the building’s lot for a black 2011 Toyota Highlander. She had wondered about the vehicle key on the key ring. Nice of the Machine to at least supply a vehicle, but an SUV would not have been her first choice.

The next envelope was from Bloomingdale’s, which was puzzling; anyone who lived in a dump like this was more likely to do their shopping at Walmart. She pulled out the letter—and had to read the opening paragraph of the letter twice before she believed it. Sameen Gray was expected to complete the enclosed paperwork and bring it along when she reported for training for her new sales associate position as a cosmetics counter sales associate at the flagship Bloomingdale’s in midtown Manhattan. Sameen shook her head in disbelief. Cosmetics counter sales? What kind of sorry-ass identity had the Machine stuck her in?

The enclosed paperwork indicated that this would be a transfer and promotion from her support associate position at the Bloomingdale’s store in SoHo, contingent upon approval of the Human Resources office. On the basis of her two years’ employment with the company, her rate of pay would be increased to $14 an hour, plus commission.

That explained this crummy Newark efficiency. No way she could afford a nice Manhattan apartment on what she would be making at a cosmetics counter. Just one more thing to be pissed about. And her training was scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:00, so she didn’t even get a day off.

Mentally, Sameen ticked off every negative aspect of her new identity. 1. Working at a cosmetics counter. 2. Living in New Jersey. 3. Living in a crappy efficiency apartment in New Jersey. 4. Commuting from New Jersey. 5. Having to commute from New Jersey every day via train, unless she wanted to drive a lame-ass SUV instead.

Somebody was going to pay for this.

* * *

The world is going to straight to hell, thought Lionel Fusco. In the wake of last night’s bombing, dozens of suspected Vigilance terrorists were being apprehended by federal authorities all across the city—several of them shot down in the streets. Hell, shootings were even happening right here in the precinct. Officer Harris was moving Stephen Soto,the suspect Fusco had brought in last night for smashing windows and looting stores on Fifth Avenue, and the two of them were gunned down right in the hallway. Soto was killed immediately, and Harris bled out within a minute despite Fusco’s best efforts to staunch the bleeding. The capper was that the gunman managed to walk right out of a police station under everyone’s noses.

And where was Reese while all this was going on? Fusco still hadn’t seen or heard squat from Mr. Tall, Dark, and Deadly since last night’s blackout. Why weren’t he and Glasses preventing at least some of this violence from happening?

* * *

Harold Whistler unlocked the front door of his Greenwich Village condominium building, held the door open for Bear, and walked in. The mailbox for his third floor condo was stuffed with envelopes, which he retrieved before taking the elevator to the third floor. His new residence proved to be a bright and well-maintained one bedroom condo, comfortably expansive enough for a couple, even one with a large dog. In fact, there was a dog bed placed in one corner. The kitchen was a bit tight, but given Harold’s limited cooking skills, would more than suffice.

Removing Bear’s leash, he sat down wearily in a chair near the windows and let the dog to investigate these new surroundings. Harold’s back and hip ached, and his shoulder was throbbing. He should really take another dose of pain medication, but at the moment, that was an action that seemed to require more effort than he could summon.

The sudden touch of a cold nose to his hand startled him; he must have zoned out for a few minutes. “Need some water, boy?” he asked. Bear woofed, and followed his master along to the kitchen, where a check of the cabinets revealed two large metal bowls and a bag of dog food. Filling both bowls and bending to set them on the floor, he heard a rattling noise that reminded him of the pill bottles in his coat pocket. John had brought them when they left the safe house this morning, along with some bandages and medical tape; he had made certain Harold pocketed these supplies before they left the library. It wasn’t yet time for the antibiotic, but he was about due for another dose of codeine. Normally, he tried to manage without painkillers as much as possible, but under the circumstances, it seemed a wise choice, so he filled a glass with tap water and swallowed a pill.

Harold removed and hung up his coat in the closet by the front door, checking to see if it had any bloodstains, relieved to find that it didn’t. Retrieving the mail that he had left on the kitchen countertop, he carried it over to the desk to review.

The first envelope was from the building’s management company. He pulled out a lease for the condo, saying that the Home Owner’s Association had approved Harold Whistler’s sublet of Jeremy Nye’s furnished condo for a period of eighteen months. There was also brochure listing the HOA’s regulations, and receipt for payment of the monthly rent of $2800 through the end of August, as well as for the HOA fees for the same period. Looking at this paperwork, Harold realized with a start that, for the first time in decades, he would have to start paying attention to his finances. All the financial accounts of his previous aliases were now beyond reach, due to Samaritan’s all-seeing eye, so he could only count on Harold Whistler’s money to meet his needs.

The next envelope held a statement from OneBank, revealing that Harold Whistler had a checking account balance of $3391.14 and $23,452.83 in savings. It seemed that he had enough money for the present, at least, which was a relief, as he had no energy to figure out what he would do if he were short of funds.

Envelope number three had no return address; it contained a nine-page resumé for Harold Whistler, Ph.D. No, it was a _curriculum vitae_ , Harold corrected himself, realizing that his new identity was that of an academic. Whistler had completed his doctorate in Economics at Nicholson-Taft University in 2005. More recently, he had held a post-doctoral position at the Wharton School of Business, and had just been awarded a $9 million joint grant from the federal Office of Financial Research and the National Science Foundation for a research project on high-frequency trading and large datasets, intended to examine the impact of trading activity at the nanosecond level on the financial system, especially in terms of the ethical consequences in terms of price competition. Harold raised his eyebrows at this: issues of computers and ethics? If he had a disciplinary specialty, this certainly was it. He hadn’t tried to program a sense of irony into the Machine, but perhaps it had developed one anyway. Or perhaps this was Ms. Groves’ idea of a joke.

The final envelope, from New York University, contained a letter notifying Harold Whistler that he had been selected for the one-year position he had applied for as visiting assistant professor of economics at the university’s Stern School of Business, at a salary of $71,000. His position, teaching two classes each term, would start with orientation in late August, just before the university’s fall semester commenced.

In a quick burst of frustration, Harold swept all of the papers to the floor. No—he couldn’t do this. It was impossible. While he had operated within different identities many times before in the course of his life, he had always been in control; he had established the identities himself. Harold Whistler was an identity not of his own making or choice; it was also a identity he would be stuck with, rather than one he could switch out of whenever he chose. And worst of all, it did not permit access to any of the people that he had grown to care about.

As Harold’s agitation increased, his hands began to shake, his legs to tremble, and his breath to come in rapid gasp. He rose and staggered toward the bed, removed his glasses, and placed them on the nightstand. Grabbing the pillows one by one, he stacked them against the headboard to support his back, then collapsed on the bed. His chin began to wobble. It was all too much; every terrible thing that had happened in the last few days crowded in on him. His Machine setting them up to execute the congressman. His terror when Decima had taken Grace. Vigilance’s show trial and his testimony, revealing secrets he had kept hidden for so long. Decima’s bombing of Vigilance’s courthouse. The murder of Peter Collier, and his own imminent execution, barely prevented by John, arriving at the last moment. The forced separation from his team. The excruciating pain of all his injuries, old and new.

He had long prided himself on his mastery of his emotions, but here and now, that control was swept away by a tidal wave of grief, fear, and guilt. Harold put his face in his hands and let the tears flow, as he couldn’t remember doing since the death of his father, so many years ago.

He heard a whimper, then felt a weight hit the bed, followed by a warm body settling against his side. Harold pulled his hands from his face and looked into Bear’s warm brown eyes. The dog licked his cheek, and Harold put his arms around him, pulling him into his chest. “Oh Bear!” he sobbed, desolately, letting his tears fall into the dog’s dark fur.


	4. April 17, 2014

When Harold Whistler finally roused himself, the clock said 9:43, hours later than his normal wake-up time—to the extent that he had been able to adhere to any routine these past few years. His body had definitely needed the sleep, and he probably would have risen even later had it not been for Bear prancing by the bed and nosing his hand, clearly signaling his need to go out.

Yawning, he began his morning stretches, stopping short at a jolt of pain in his shoulder. Clearly, it was time for more pain medication; antibiotics too. He would also need to change the bandages, but that was likely to be both time-consuming and tricky . Medication now, a shower and bandages later, he decided, and staggered into the bathroom.

Once finished in the bathroom, he headed to the kitchen. The refrigerator, he discovered, had little to offer. The freezer portion had a frozen tube of orange juice, but that would require more time and effort than he felt like putting into it right now. He hadn’t eaten much of anything yesterday, so he needed a real breakfast, but he would have to go out in order to get one.

Next he opened the closet to pick out his clothes for the day. The choice was not to his taste, but then, that was to be expected. Harold Whistler would be earning a good salary, but not enough to be walking around in bespoke suits. Still, there was no purpose served by thinking about that at this moment. The current objective was clothing that he could put on without aggravating his shoulder wound any more than absolutely necessary.

The boxers he had worn to bed would suffice for now, he decided, and there was no point going to all the effort of putting on a T-shirt he would have to take off again shortly to change his bandages. He pulled a plaid flannel shirt out of the closet and set it on the bed. Normally, he would have shuddered at the thought of wearing it in public, but right now its soft warmth was appealing. The chest of drawers yielded socks and a pair of khaki pants that would do.

The pain in his shoulder made it extremely difficult to pull on his socks; he was gasping by the time he finished. Fortunately, the rest of his clothes went on with a minimum of pain, especially once he decided it would not be worth the effort to tuck the shirt in the pants. He was relieved to find a pair of brown loafers in the closet that he could slip on, as he didn’t think he would be able to tie shoelaces in his current condition. He should probably put on some sort of sling to support his arm, but he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself while he was in public.

Fully dressed, he regarded himself balefully in the mirror. He certainly didn’t look like himself in this get-up and the silvery stubble on his face, but he supposed that was the whole point. Returning to the closet for a coat and hat, he spotted the pile of yesterday’s clothing that he had discarded on the floor. He would need to dispose of it in some manner that avoided any connection with him, particularly the items with bloodstains.

For now, though, it was time to concentrate on the task at hand; Harold needed his breakfast and Bear needed his walk. He turned to find the dog looking up at him hopefully, leash in his mouth. “Yes, Bear, let’s go,” he said. “We’ll take a look at our new neighborhood.”

* * *

“Detective John Riley?”

“Yes, sir.” John stood up and walked toward the tall man, wearing a tan suit and sporting neatly-styled short blonde hair and mustache, who had just opened his office door.

“I’m Captain Eloranta. Welcome to the 44th.”

John shook the extended hand. “Nice to meet you, Captain.”

“Come in and let’s talk about what you’ll be doing for us.” John followed him into the office and took the indicated chair. “I understand you were involved in undercover work on narcotics cases back at your district in Chicago?”

“Yes, sir. I spent more than three years in two undercover operations in the city. We were able to convict eight of the leaders of the Folk Nation gang on narcotics and racketeering charges, along with members of the Sinaloa cartel that they were dealing with.”

“Well that’s the type of work we have in mind for you here. We want you to be part of our investigations aimed at the gang that’s been giving us the most trouble recently—the Young Flybridge.” Captain Eloranta pulled out a map with notations of drug activity in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx. “YFB has been attracting a lot more members in Highbridge over the last couple of years, and they’re behind most of the drug trafficking in the Bronx. Mostly crack, heroin, and Oxy.”

“Has there been any undercover work with the gang so far?” John asked.

“No, not yet. We’ve tried to get people from the neighborhood to tell us what’s going on, but it’s been impossible to get any of them to cooperate with us, because they’re too afraid of gang retribution. So we’ve decided an undercover operation is our best bet. But that requires someone who isn’t already known in the area as police, which is why you’re here.”

“I assume you don’t mean by joining the gang,” said Riley. “From what little I know about YFB, I don’t think I fit the profile.”

Eloranta smiled. “No you don’t. But they seem to be using local businesses and apartments to sell the drugs. So we’re going to set you up as someone who’s willing to work with the gang to earn a quick buck.”

“So how do we get started?” asked John.

“First thing is to talk with Detectives Hamill and Rodriguez, to get you up to speed. Follow me.”

* * *

Sameen Gray gritted her teeth, chin resting on the palm of her hand. Torture was something he had thought that she had learned how to withstand when she worked for the government, but five hours of completing paperwork and listening to orientation speakers drone on was just about enough to break her. The half hour scheduled for lunch hadn’t helped much, since they hadn’t even left the room (the bathroom break didn’t count), and had to settle for the puny sandwiches the company had provided. Given the side-eyed glances directed her way when she helped herself to seconds, she figured she’d better not go for thirds.

At least it looked like this session might finally be winding up, which was about time, since according to her calculations, the speakers had covered about 437 company rules. She straightened up and somehow managed to maintain a straight face when Ms. Weiss finished with a cheery “Welcome to the Bloomingdale’s family!” and everyone else applauded.

But when the HR director jumped up to say “Thank you so much, Sharon. And now it’s time for training for your specific departments,” Sameen had to stifle a groan. “Tony and Steve, please go with Mr. Thompson. Frank, you’re with Ms. Antonio. Sameen and Georgia, follow Ms. Nolan.” 

Sullenly, Sameen trudged along to the cosmetics counter. “Okay, ladies!” chirped Nolan, enthusiastically. “The most important thing you will be doing in this job is making up customers to show them which products work best for them, so we’re going to practice. Georgia, you’re going to make up Sameen, and then she’ll make up you. Won’t that be fun?”

Sameen clenched her fists. Kill me now, she thought, or I’m going to find some very inventive uses for eyebrow pencils.

* * *

Sitting at his desk at the precinct, Lionel Fusco checked out news reports on his computer. Things had calmed down significantly since yesterday. On the one hand, that was encouraging. On the other hand, it was as if there had been a sudden attack of mass amnesia. Somehow, it seemed that no one had taken notice of what had happening on the streets yesterday. There were no official comments, no statistics—not even a mention on the news.

The same was true of yesterday’s precinct shooting. No one at the 8th was talking about it any more. It was as if it had never happened. Lionel found that downright creepy.

Speaking of creepy, he still hadn’t heard a peep from Wonderboy. Or from the Professor. Usually, he could count on at least one phone call by this hour, requesting police information on whatever individual they were looking at, or asking him to tail someone. Today, nothing. He supposed he should just be enjoying the break, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong—really wrong.

* * *

Josephine McCracken answered the phone at her desk on the second ring. “Alberts and Winczewski; how can I help you?”

“This is Tom Rossum. I need to set up an appointment with Dan Alberts to see about revising my will,” replied a timid male voice.

She opened Alberts’ appointment calendar on her screen and maximized it. “He has an opening next Thursday at 10:30 a.m. Will that work for you?”

“That’ll be fine. Thank you.”

“We’ll send you a reminder. Have a nice day.”

Hanging up the phone, Josephine leaned back in her chair and sighed. She had been working a temp receptionist job at this law firm for two hours and forty-five minutes, and she was bored to death. Once again, she really had no idea why she was here, or why the Machine had decided it was necessary for her to move on to another identity so quickly.

But she had woken up to a calendar alert for a dog-grooming appointment, a pre-arranged signal she had worked out with the Machine to let her know it was time to pick up a new phone and dial the number listed in the alert in order to learn her new identity. She reached a recorded message informing Josephine McCracken that her that her wig was ready to be picked up at Florita’s Beauty Bar—which why she was now sporting a head full of red curls. Then she had been directed to show up at Alberts and Winczewski for a one-day temp job.

Since she had arrived, however, all she had done was answer the phone, file a few papers, make a pot of coffee, water the plants, and fend off Winczewski’s advances. Nothing that would seem important enough to merit the Machine’s attention.

That left her mind far too free, and she had spent most of the morning visualizing how everyone was reacting to their new cover identities. She was certain that Shaw was fuming; she was no more suited to a service position than herself, and wasn’t as readily capable of pasting on a smile and a compliant attitude. No, Sameen did _not_ suffer fools gladly. And while Harold’s temperament might be more of a match for the position of professor, his recent experiences would likely make him highly unreceptive to anything that the Machine called upon him to do. As for Reese, well, she got a kick out of the idea of the big guy being forced to pretend to be a cop.

Her musings were interrupted when the firm’s front door opened and a slim blonde woman walked in. Josephine looked up with a smile—then carefully schooled herself not to respond in recognition, because this was the same woman she had observed yesterday at the café, clothed today in a fashionable black pantsuit and wearing her hair loose about her shoulders.

“I have an appointment with Douglas Roberts.” the blonde said with a smile. “Martine Rousseau?”

Josephine quickly checked Roberts’ schedule, and found her name. “Of course, Ms. Rousseau. Let me just give him a buzz.” She dialed his extension. “Mr. Roberts, Ms. Rousseau is here for her appointment.” She listened to his response, then hung up the phone. “He will be ready for you shortly. If you’d like to have a seat while you’re waiting?” she said, nodding toward the waiting area.

Josephine watched closely as Rousseau turned and walked over to a chair. Yes, it was definitely the same woman as yesterday, and once again, she sported an earwig. Seeing this woman two days in a row—in two different identities—was far from a coincidence. Neither was the fact that the Machine had directed a change of identity and appearance this morning. Plus, she remembered that “Roberts” was one of the names that Watkins had mentioned yesterday at lunch with Fiore.

And today, the woman was clearly listening to someone on the earwig. Or perhaps to some _thing_. The hairs on the back of Josephine’s neck prickled. She was willing to bet that the Machine had placed her in positions where she could observe this woman twice in two days because of the likelihood that she was a Samaritan agent. And Josephine was certain that the Machine’s assessment was accurate.


	5. May 11, 2014

“What do you think of this shade?”

“This one is nice, too, but Sugar and Spice is _definitely_ the one you want for everyday,” replied Sameen Gray, in a voice that barely extended far enough beyond monotone to disguise her boredom.

The brunette atop the cosmetics counter stool tipped her head and studied her reflection in the mirror, eyes crinkled in thought. “I don’t know. I think maybe I like this shade a little better.”

“Yes, Moonlight Madness looks very nice on you.” Sameen sighed internally. This woman was terminally indecisive, and had been going back and forth on lipstick shades for more than forty-five minutes. Just choose a lipstick and go, lady! 

The brunette pursed her lips. “Better than Sugar and Spice?”

About to hiss a reply, Sameen was interrupted by the approach of Mr. Turk, the prissy, bespectacled floor manager, and bane of her existence. “How are we doing, ladies?”

“We’re trying to choose a lipstick shade for daily wear,” replied Sameen, as evenly as she could manage, turning to look at the man and his perfectly styled buzzcut. “She tried Sugar and Spice first, and it complements her complexion perfectly.”

“But I like Moonlight Madness too,” the brunette whined, admiring herself in the mirror again.

“I certainly agree. Don’t you think that this shade looks lovely on her, Ms. Gray?” said the floor manager, casting an imperious gaze in her direction.

“Of course,” replied Sameen, inwardly—and almost outwardly—seething. “I just think that it’s maybe a little too dramatic for everyday wear.”

Turk looked at the customer, shaking his head. Of course, not a single hair moved, thought Sameen. He probably used half a bottle of hair gel every day. “I would really hate to see you leave the store without this shade, when it looks so wonderful on you,” Turk said.

The brunette nodded, considering. Suddenly, she brightened. “Maybe I should get them both!”

“That’s a _marvelous_ idea!” the floor manager beamed. “I’m sure you won’t be sorry with that decision. Ms. Gray will be happy to handle your purchase. And thank you very much for visiting us today.” He nodded a farewell, and walked away from the counter.

The brunette kept chattering away as Sameen turned a deaf ear while ringing up the purchase and packaging the tubes of lipstick. “Please come again,” she said in a tone of fake cheer, as she handed the bag to the customer. Seeing the floor manager returning, she cast her gaze down at the counter so she could roll her eyes unobserved.

“You do understand that the whole point of Bloomingdale’s is that we sell items, Ms. Gray?” he said, snippily.

Sameen gritted her teeth at his tone. “Yes.”

“And that you need to start averaging more sales if you’re going to equal the draw you have taken on your commission this month?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Then perhaps you can find it within yourself to be a bit more encouraging to the customers?”

“I’ll do my best,” she replied, barely trying to restrain her annoyance.

“I’m so happy to hear that,” Turk responded, sarcastically, then spun on his heel and strode away. 

Sameen stared daggers at his back as he moved out of view. God, this insufferable guy is stuffier than Finch. There had been no love lost between the two of them since she had arrived for her first day on the job and he had reprimanded her for what she was wearing. In Sameen’s opinion, her all-black top and pants outfit met the store’s requirements for the sales floor employees, but Turk did not agree. “That outfit might have been acceptable at another Bloomingdale’s,” he sniffed, “but not at the flagship store.” He decreed that she had “failed to meet our style mantra of professional, neat, and pulled together,” and mandated that she couldn’t start working that day until she was appropriately dressed. 

As a result, she was immediately forced to purchase a little black dress from the ladies’ department and a pair of heels from the shoe department, which meant spending nearly three hundred dollars on her very first day of work, even with her employee discount. And, of course, he had raised an eyebrow when she tried to wear the same dress twice in a week, so she’d had to pick up three more little black dresses to supplement the limited number in the wardrobe that the Machine had prepared for her. She made sure to purchase them at less expensive stores, but all told, she had found it necessary to charge almost $800 worth of clothing purchases before she even received her first paycheck.

Which was cutting into her food budget—another reason she was so annoyed.

* * *

Lionel Fusco wasn’t sure _what_ to think. Almost a month, and still no word—from Reese, Finch, or Shaw. There was a lot of risk in the work that they did, so it was certainly possible that one of them had been hurt or killed, but all of them at once? And without contacting him for help? That didn’t seem likely, but he supposed it was possible.

He hated to admit it, but he was actually worried about them, which came as something of a surprise. Wonderboy seemed to have more lives then a damn cat, carrying on despite wounds and blows that seemed enough to knock out anyone who was actually human. Despite her small size, Shaw was almost as tough. And while Glasses wasn’t someone who seemed capable of defending himself against any physical threat, Reese’s protective streak could usually be depended upon to keep him safe. Lionel kept telling himself that they must be all right—all of them. But day after day, that notion became more difficult to believe.

So he was worried. And when he came right down to it, he was also bored. He had become accustomed to the spur-of-the-moment tail jobs, need-an-answer-right-away police record searches, and impromptu gun battles that had become a regular occurrence since John Reese had entered his life. Now, working just his official job felt almost like being on vacation. It reminded him of the old joke: Why do you keep hitting yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.

There was one benefit had come from the absence of Reese and company; Lionel had more time to spend with Lee, now that his work days often ended at a more normal hour. Well, as normal as it got for someone on the Homicide Task Force, anyway. He supposed that he ought to take advantage while he could. He had no idea when things might change once again.

* * *

Having bagged up Bear’s deposit, Harold Whistler tossed it in a nearby waste container, breathing a bit faster than normal. While his shoulder wound had finally healed sufficiently that it was no longer painful, he was unable to walk the distances that he used to be able to manage, as he had yet to fully rebuild his stamina. So he headed over to utilize a bench for a few minutes, dropping the handle of the dog’s leash as he sat. Obediently, the Malinois sat down beside him without prompting, turning his attention to all of the fascinating creatures moving around in front of him—in particular, two chittering gray squirrels, one chasing the other up an oak tree.

Harold sighed. He loved Washington Square Park, and he supposed that the Machine had realized that. How else to explain the nearby location of both his new apartment and the teaching position he was scheduled to begin in August? But the opportunity to frequent this particular park on a daily basis also carried with it a pang of angst, for the reason that this park had become special to him was because of Grace.

Truthfully, though he had purchased the townhouse on the park three years before he even met her, he had barely given the park itself a thought at the time, beyond the exclusivity of that neighborhood. While he enjoyed running in parks, he preferred to do so within the large expanse of Central Park, where one could almost be convinced that they had left the city behind, or in Battery Park, with the harbor and its islands in the background.

But Grace had squealed with delight when he introduced her to the house, exclaiming that she thought it was wonderful, and that the park was one of her favorite places in the entire city. She had wondered how he had managed to acquire such an expensive piece of real estate; he had answered her question with a vague reference to inheriting it from a deceased relative.

Perhaps he had invited her to move in with him even more quickly than he might have otherwise because of that reaction, but if so, that was an impulse that he had never regretted. When he prepared to propose to her, he made sure that her name was added next to Harold Martin’s on the title. It proved fortunate that he had done so, for that action had made it possible for her to keep the house after that identity’s supposed death.

Once he was forced to leave Grace behind after the ferry bombing, the park prompted bittersweet emotions. It was a place he could go when he needed to feel near to Grace, perhaps even catch a glimpse of her. But doing so also emphasized his sense of loss; he could never be with her again without placing her at risk.

In the end, though, that separation hadn’t been enough to protect her. Somehow, Samaritan had managed to track her down as someone connected to Harold Finch, and Greer had kidnaped her for the express purpose of luring in Harold to surrender himself. Which, of course, he had done without a second thought.

And now, the only reason that he could ramble through the park as frequently and lengthily as he chose, was because he had sent Grace away to a new country with a new identity, hoping once again that his actions would keep her safe. It was a good thing she was no longer near at hand; given his current proximity and amount of free time, he wasn’t certain he would have been able to resist the temptation to look in on her all of the time. It would have been far too risky. Now, of course, it wasn’t even an option.

Enough salt in the wound for one day; Harold was ready to leave the park behind for now. Slowly, he stood, stretching his tight muscles in order to prepare them to move once again. “Come, Bear,” he said. He picked up the leash and the two of them headed out of the park.

* * *

Angela Hawkins peered out the driver’s side window of her sedan and across the street at the small, bespectacled man in the gray suit walking his dog out of Washington Square Park. He was limping, but his uneven gait seemed no worse than it had ever been.

As the man turned onto University Place, she started her car and slowly followed, continuing to observe. She wouldn’t be able to drive this at this leisurely speed for long, as the drivers behind her would soon become impatient, but she wanted to watch him for a few more moments. Following him on foot would have enabled her to stick with him longer, but she didn’t want to run the risk of Bear sniffing out her presence. While she would have truly appreciated the opportunity to spend some time talking to Harold, especially after a month spent completely on her own, she knew she must not do so. Until the Machine told her differently, she couldn’t risk direct contact with any other member of the team.

After a block and a half, she slowly increased her speed so she could edge past him, taking one long last look. She was pleased to see no indication that his shoulder wound was still giving him problems. He was even holding Bear’s leash in his right hand, which was a good sign. It was unlikely that the Machine would continue to direct her to deliver antibiotics to his apartment. While a continued supply of painkillers would be beneficial for him, she suspected that the Machine knew that he would refuse to take them.

She continued on University Place, watching in the rear window as Harold and Bear turned onto 9th Street. Time to turn her attention to the task at hand: the Machine’s latest mission. Angela Hawkins was starting her temp office job with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation this morning, where she was going to be keeping a very close eye on whatever Barry Steinhaus, the Chief of Forestry and Horticulture, was up to today.

* * *

Tom Reynolds, aka Detective John Riley, walked into Leon’s Tavern, a downscale establishment in the Bronx neighborhood known as Highbridge, to which he had recently moved. Looking around, he spotted his co-worker Eduardo Jiminez sitting at a corner table with four other young men. Jiminez, a skinny young man who went by the nickname “Lil Bro Ed,” waved him over to join them.

“ _Compadres_ ,” said Ed, as Reynolds reached the table, “this is my new _amigo_ Tom. Tom, this is my brother Luis.” Luis, a slightly older and stockier version of his brother, raised his glass, and Tom, taking the last empty chair, nodded in response. Ed continued his introductions. “This is Malik, G, and Montana,” he said, indicating each of the three African American men in turn.

Luis pushed the bottle of Mezcal they had been drinking over to Tom. “Please, join us.” Tom noted that the bottle contained only a small swallow of tequila, along with the worm. Luis probably intended this as some sort of test. Without hesitation, Tom raised the bottle and poured the entire contents into his mouth. He swallowed the liquid and chewed the worm without flinching, looking Luis straight in the eye.

“Well done, mi amigo,” said Ed, clapping Tom on the shoulder and favoring him with a broad grin. “I never trust a man who doesn’t know how to drink Mezcal properly.”

“Glad I measured up,” Tom replied, knowing that this was only an early step in what would be required to make his undercover mission successful. He had been working at the bodega for the past three weeks, where he had already been witness to a few of YFB’s drug deals, surreptitiously taking photos with a miniature camera that the NYPD had supplied. He was certain that he had handled his reaction to these deals in a way that had worked to earn Ed’s trust, but knew it would take some time and effort to persuade the others they could safely use him as part of YFB’s drug trafficking operations. He had to handle this carefully—to seem interested, but not too eager.

“So you work with my brother at the bodega?” Luis asked.

“That’s right.”

“What do you do?”

Tom shrugged. “A little bit of everything. I clean up, bring in the boxes from the delivery trucks, stock the shelves, work behind the counter when the boss needs an extra hand.”

“Seems like poor work for a man of your age,” said G, eyeing him suspiciously.

“It’s just temporary,” Tom replied. “I’m keeping my eyes open for a better opportunity.”

“And just what is it that brought you to Highbridge?” asked Montana, a burly young man with a jagged scar on the right side of his forehead.

Tom shrugged. “It was time for a change of scenery.”

“Oh? Had to leave some problems behind?” Montana’s question was pointed.

Tom slouched back in his chair. “Perhaps,” he said, nonchalantly.

“He’s looking for some action,” Ed interjected. “He could be very helpful to us.”

“Oh?” replied G, leaning forward across the table. “And what is it that you can do?”

“Well, I’ve got a lot of experience as a buyer,” Tom replied.

“Of what?”

“Many things,” said Tom. “I look for what people want, and I help them get it.”

Luis leaned forward and studied Tom closely. “I think we need to get to know your new amigo better first,” he commented to Ed.

Tom smiled. “I look forward to it. I’m an open book. But first, let me buy the next round.” He walked over to the bar and ordered another bottle of Mezcal, which he carried back to the table.

“Just what we need to celebrate Eduardo’s birthday,” said Luis.

Tom picked up the bottle and saluted Ed. “ _¡Felicidades! ¡Feliz cumpleaños!_ ” He tossed back a hefty swallow of Mezcal, then passed the bottle to his left so the other men at the table could follow suit.


	6. June 6, 2014

Sameen Gray slammed her phone down on the kitchen counter in anger. Another frickin’ rejection!

Fed up with her job at Bloomingdale’s, she had started applying for other jobs—any type of job that she thought there might be the slightest possibility of her actually getting. But it wasn’t working. With her new identity as Sameen Gray, she couldn’t put together a resumé that would help her get any type of job than the one that she was already working at—and which she despised.

She had hoped to get around those limitations by searching the local job listings, picking out jobs that wouldn’t annoy her—or bore her to tears—and applying in person. It wasn’t easy getting past the reception desk and actually talking to someone in charge, but she had managed to do so three times in the last two weeks.

The first interview had been a disaster. She was definitely out of practice, as she hadn’t put in the effort to try to impress someone since applying for her medical residency. But her second interview seemed to go a lot better, and the third—for a security position with an area auto dealer—she was _certain_ she had nailed that one. She had pasted a smile on her face, taken part in the cheery small talk that job interviews inevitably started with, and answered all the questions with aplomb. As she left the interview, it had been all smiles and handshakes and “We look forward to working with you.”

Yet she had just received the call informing her, officially, that they were not able to offer her a position at this time. On the phone, Ms. Evans, who had been so friendly on the day of the interview, spoke in a notably frosty tone. Sameen had inquired as to the reason for the rejection; while Evans had not provided a substantive explanation, her comment that “it’s important that the people we hire share our values” implied that they had learned something negative about Sameen since the interview.

What had happened? Sameen had her suspicions; she was willing to bet that the Machine had somehow interfered in the process. Having placed Sameen into such an annoying job in the first place, it was going to great lengths to keep her there. But why was it so essential that Sameen keep working at Bloomingdale’s? Normal people changed jobs all the time—why shouldn’t she?

She sighed. It wasn’t like she could do anything about the situation right now, so she might as well try to distract herself somehow. Besides, she was hungry, and the tantalizing aroma of Portuguese specialities were seeping in through her open windows. This weekend was the Portugal Day festival, held every year in the Ironbound, her Newark neighborhood.

Food was the only thing the Machine had gotten right about her current situation. The Ironbound offered a variety of appealing ethnic fare—Portuguese, Ecuadorian, Brazilian, Spanish, and Italian—in dozens of restaurants within walking distance of her apartment. Verde’s Bakery was just two doors down. Fornos of Spain was just across the street.

In the weeks that she had been living in Newark, she had sampled as many of these restaurants as possible. She could happily have spent several nights every week dining only at the Brasilia Grill, feasting on _rodizio_ —meat that waiters carried around on skewers and sliced off for the patrons—if the money she earned at her job had been sufficient to make that a feasible option.

As it was, she had to watch her expenses carefully in order to be able to afford to eat out a couple of nights a week at her favorite restaurants. Tonight, however, there would be many Portuguese food booths on the street, serving a variety of tasty, yet relatively inexpensive items. Sameen intended to consume _frango grelhado_ to her heart’s content, washed down with an ungodly amount of sangria, and topped off by a few _pastéis de nata_. If she had to keep living this crappy existence that the Machine had created for her, she was going to take full advantage of every opportunity to eat and drink her frustrations away.

* * *

Just inside the front window of Casey’s Cooking, YFB members were working out a drug deal with Peter Casey, the restaurant’s owner. Standing on a fire escape across the street from the restaurant, Detective John Riley watched the action through his camera’s telephoto lens, snapping photos of the participants. When he was certain he had enough to clearly identify all the men involved, as well as the location, he packed up the camera, returned to the street level, and walked off at a good clip. Given that he was still operating undercover as Tom Reynolds and working on convincing members of the gang that they should make use of his services to help sell drugs, he didn’t want to risk getting caught in the act of spying.

Captain Eloranta at the 44th would be happy with the evidence of an additional Bronx location that the gang was using to sell drugs, but to John, it didn’t feel like he had accomplished a damn thing. Sure, it would be good to pull some drug sellers off the street, but (a) that hadn’t happened yet, and (b) once it did, he was sure that they would quickly be replaced by somebody else just as bad, if not worse.

Which made the whole thing rather pointless. And pointless was the perfect adjective for his entire existence since Samaritan had driven them all into exile. How right Harold had been, when he first tried to hire John, to tell him that “You need a purpose.” That’s exactly what Harold had provided, and that purpose had turned John’s life around. Saving the irrelevants had made him feel—for the first time in far too long—that he was actually accomplishing something worthwhile.

Now all that was in the past. Any current numbers were dying, with the Machine unable to notify the members of a team that it had disbanded for their own protection. Bitterly, John laughed to himself. That must make him the most irrelevant person of all.

With nothing else on his docket for the moment, John decided to head to Manhattan. Moving around in a different part of the city would at least be a change of pace from all of the time he had been spending in the Bronx since going undercover. Double undercover, really. John Reese pretending to be John Riley pretending to be Tom Reynolds. He was heartily sick of it all, and figured he was entitled to play hooky for the rest of the day.

John caught the D train, rode it for a while, then exited in Midtown on a whim. Departing the subway station, he just kept walking in the same direction, barely paying attention to his surroundings or the unseasonable heat. It wasn’t until the third time that he wiped sweat off his brow that he began looking for a place to pick up something to drink.

Just as he spotted a bodega, a gunshot rang out behind him. A horde of screaming pedestrians rushed past John, seeking safety, as he spun around to see what had happened. He quickly spied a young man with shaggy black hair plastered against the wall of a building, wildly swinging a handgun around at whoever seemed the most imminent threat. Another young man lay on the sidewalk with a bleeding shoulder wound. His eyes fixed on the gunman, John slowly walked over to the shooting victim.

“Stop right there!” yelled the shooter, eyes wide with fear.

John waved his hands in the air. “I won’t come near you. I’m just trying to help him.” He advanced a few steps further, still eying the fearful man, then knelt next to the victim and took a closer look at his wound. Fortunately, he was not losing a great deal of blood, but it would be best if he received medical help as soon as possible. “He’s going to need an ambulance,” he told the shooter.

“No! No ambulance, and no cops!” the man shouted. “He got what he deserved! And if anyone gets in my way, they’re gonna get it too!”

“Why? What did he do?” asked John, hoping to keep the man talking rather than shooting.

“They caught him breaking into his old man’s store, and he said I made him do it. Now they’re after me!”

“Did you make him do it?” John asked.

“It’s not my fault! I just told him that he had to come up with $200!” Sirens began to sound, and the gunman looked around wildly to look for anyone using a cellphone. “Someone called the cops! Who did that?”

While the gunman was distracted, John quickly pulled his gun from the back of his pants. Hiding it behind the shooting victim, he spoke once again. “It’s probably just an ambulance.”

“No! I know better! It’s the cops, and you called them, didn’t you? I’m going to have to take care of you too!” the man screamed. He aimed his gun, but John quickly brought up his weapon and squeezed off a shot, just as a police car pulled up. A bright spot of red popped up on the right knee of the distraught man, who immediately fell down, howling in pain.

“Police! Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air!” shouted the uniformed officer who had just emerged from his vehicle. John obeyed, and didn’t resist as the officer’s partner pulled his hands behind his back and cuffed them.

* * *

Sister Teresa smiled at the short, muscular man standing beside her on the edge of the ball diamond, a few feet away from a small clutch of parents watching their young sons playing an after school baseball game. “I can’t tell you how much we appreciate this, Mr. Duffy. Your donation to our scholarship fund will mean so much to our students. Bless you for your generosity.”

Brian Duffy shook his head and bit his lip in embarrassment. “It’s the least I can do. If it weren’t for St. Leo’s who knows where I’d be today?” He turned to look directly at her. “After my mother died, I almost dropped out of school, because my father didn’t share her belief in the importance of getting an education. If it wasn’t for Sister Rosemary and Sister Mary Valmira, and their refusal to just accept his decision to pull me out of school and put me to work, I never would have graduated. I wouldn’t have the life that I have today.” He looked back at the boys on the diamond. “It’s important to make sure that as many students as possible have the same opportunities that I had.”

“Well, you are certainly one of the alumni that St. Leo’s points to with pride. And your Tim is doing extremely well,” Sister Teresa said, nodding at the boy playing second base. “He’s at the top of all of his classes.”

“That’s because he takes after his mother,” replied Duffy, modestly. “She’s the smart one in the family.”

“But I’m sure his athletic ability comes from you.”

Duffy nodded briefly, then quickly changed the subject. “You’re a newcomer here at St. Leo’s, right Sister?”

Sister Teresa nodded. “Yes, I started here last week. The bishop thought I could help out overseeing the school’s financial operations.”

Duffy sighed. “I heard that Father Joseph left things in quite a mess.”

“A bit. But I think we’ll have all the accounts straightened up very soon.”

“Which brings us back to the business at hand.” As Duffy reached for the pocket inside his jacket’s lapel, his phone suddenly announced “Seven o’clock.”

Well, that definitely wasn’t the current time, thought Sister Teresa, so it must be the Machine alerting her to a threat coming at them from behind. Spinning around, she spotted two armed men in masks, heading straight for Duffy, so she stepped over to where half a dozen bats were sitting on the side of the field, and grabbed the closest one. As the men approached, she swung the bat into the stomach of the nearest one; staggering from the blow, he dropped his gun as he fell, and she kicked it away. The second man grabbed Duffy from behind. As he was raising his weapon, Sister Teresa delivered a powerful blow into the back of his right knee, and he crumpled. One more swing of bat at his hand yielded a pained scream as he let go of his gun, which she stepped on to secure.

Duffy gaped at her in amazement. “I thought I’d met some tough nuns when I was a kid, but that was incredible! Where did you learn to do that?”

“Well, I wasn’t always a nun,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders. By that time, several of the fathers who had been watching their sons had rushed over and grabbed the two assailants. She walked over to the closest of the two and pulled off his mask.

“Davison?” Duffy gasped. “What’s going on here?” Still groaning from the blows to his knee and hand, the man said nothing.

“You know him?”

Duffy looked at her in shock. “He works in my office. I thought he was my friend.”

“Do you have any idea why he attacked you?” she asked.

“No. Unless . . . .”

“Unless what?”

He reached back into his pocket and pulled out a thick envelope. “Unless it’s about my donation to the school scholarship fund.”

Her eyes widened, and she drew him away from everyone else. “You’re carrying $15,000—in _cash_?” she said, speaking softly.

He nodded sheepishly. “I know I should have written a check, but I just wanted it to feel more . . . personal.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “And you _told him_ you were going to be carrying all this money?”

“It just kind of came up when we were talking about our school days.”

“Well, I think we’d better get that money in the school’s safe right away.” She looked over at the parents holding the two thieves. “Thank you so much for your help. When the police arrive, tell them we’ll be in the main office. Please come with me, Mr. Duffy,” she said, turning toward the school.

So this time it had been about saving a number, she thought. That had been the case about a dozen times since the team had been split up. Unfortunately, she had failed three of those times. That was part of the price to be paid for Samaritan being on-line; on her own, she couldn’t duplicate the effort that the full team could produce.

But there was no point wasting time on regrets at the moment. Duffy was safe, which meant that her current identity was coming to an end. And it would be best if Sister Teresa somehow managed to disappear before the police arrived.

* * *

Lionel Fusco tapped the key that would send the report he had just finished to his captain. He rolled his shoulders to loosen them, leaned back in his chair, and chewed on his lip. Once again, he actually had down time on the job. That had happened fairly often lately, but he still wasn’t used to it.

After the explosion of violence in the city—and other cities across the country—back in April, things seemed to have settled down to more normal levels. Normal for the way things had been before the bane of existence had first turned up, anyhow. But _that_ normal just didn’t _feel_ normal to Lionel any more.

Two months, and still no word. What in the world had happened? Because not only had he not heard from any of the team, homicides in the city had returned to the level they had been back before he had been pulled into their crazy mission. Which meant that they probably weren’t working it without him. As far as he knew, they could all be dead.

It should be something of a relief; his life was much simpler now. No more worrying about Mr. Tall, Dark, and Threatening popping up in the corner of his eye, or calling him and saying “Lionel” in that quiet, menacing tone that only he could manage. No more reminders that the Professor was listening in on Lionel’s phone, hearing things that Lionel would have preferred to keep private.

But the reality was that his life was feeling really empty these days. Maybe he was only a junior partner—he knew there were a lot of things they weren’t telling him—but he missed the camaraderie of being part of a team. Oh, he had some friends on the force, but so many of the most important happenings in his life were ones he couldn’t talk about with anyone, especially now that Carter was gone.

He hesitated to admit it, but he was actually feeling a little lonely, a feeling exacerbated by the fact that Lee was living with his mother for the summer, so most of Lionel’s days ended in a dark and quiet apartment. Heck, at this point he might even welcome a visit from that nutball who had once kidnaped Finch, but who now seemed to have become another member of the team.

And whenever he looked at the rise in the city’s homicide numbers, a distressing feeling of helplessness rose within him. What he had been doing these last few years had mattered; he had helped make a difference. It didn’t feel like he was doing that any more.

Lionel’s moment of introspection was interrupted when Officer Danko walked over to his desk. “Fusco? We’ve got someone in interrogation, and he says he’ll only talk to you.”

“What’s this about?” Lionel asked, puzzled.

“He took down a shooter in Midtown. Turns out he’s a cop; he had a shield on him. We’re checking out his badge number, but in the meantime, he wants to talk to you.”

“Sure, why not?” replied Lionel, standing up, and heading toward the interrogation room. “I’m a great conversationalist.” 

Opening the door to the interrogation room, he stared in amazement. There, large as life, stood Mr. Tall, Dark, and Threatening. In the flesh, with his usual smirk. Lionel pushed the door shut quickly.

“How’ve you been, Lionel?” John asked.

“How have _I_ been?” Lionel repeated in disbelief. “Where the hell have _you_ been?”

“Around,” John shrugged.

Lionel scoffed. “Oh, _that_ clears it all up. And aren’t you taking a big risk, flashing Detective Stills’ shield around the precinct?” 

John was about to reply when there was a knock on the door, and Officer Danko poked his head in. “Just got confirmation, Fusco. This is Detective John Riley. He works Narcotics out of the 44th. Captain says we need to cut him loose.” He shrugged his shoulders and closed the door again.

“You’re an actual cop now,” Lionel said, dubiously.

“So it would seem.”

“How did that happen? And where have you and your partners in crime been?”

“It’s complicated,” John replied. “And I can’t explain right now. I can’t be spending my time hanging around with cops.” He stood up and walked over to the door, then paused to turn back toward Lionel, the merest hint of a smile on his face. “Take care of yourself, Lionel.” Then he left the room, leaving a dumbfounded Fusco in his wake.

* * *

Of all the places in the world that Harold Whistler had expected himself to be at this point in his life, being surrounded by a roomful of impatient Home Owners Association members, all ordered to show up for an emergency meeting, was nowhere near the top of the list. But that was where he found himself on this unseasonably sticky early summer evening.

Mrs. Sylvia Aramante, the rail-thin, gray-haired, and sharp-faced president of the HOA, banged her gavel on the table at front. “May I have your attention please?”

“What’s this all about?” a bald-headed man with pinched features asked. “And can we get started? The Yankees start playing in twenty minutes.”

“We only have one item of business,” replied the president. “It pertains to Mr. Whistler.” Startled, Harold looked over at her, his features expressing his puzzlement.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Whistler,” the woman continued, “but at the time that your sublease of Jeremy Nye’s condo was approved, the Home Owners’ Association was not informed that you owned a former military dog. Had we known, we would not have permitted you to bring in such a dangerous animal.” A handful of the residents at the meeting nodded in approval of her words, while the most of the others exchanged blank looks, puzzled by a controversy they had heard nothing about until this very moment.

Harold clenched his jaw, swallowing the angry retort he wanted to make, knowing it would only make matters worse. “Bear is fully trained and quite friendly,” he stated, in the calmest voice he could muster. “He’s no threat to any of you.”

“How can you possibly claim he isn’t a threat!” cried Rita Owens, a short, frizzy-haired blonde, clutching to her chest a bag holding a growling Chihuahua. “He attacked my Mitzi, without any provocation!” 

Consuela Montez spoke up. “Your Mitzi is the one that’s dangerous! She was just about to bite my little boy when Bear stopped her!”

“That’s a lie! Mitzi is perfectly well-behaved and sweet-natured!” Owens shrieked, followed immediately by a series of sharp barks from the animal in question.

“Mitzi? Sweet?” Ralph Hansen laughed derisively. “She’s about as sweet as a shark!” His comment sparked titters and guffaws from several people around the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please!” said Aramante, imperiously, slamming the HOA rulebook against the table. “Let’s handle this in an orderly fashion! The chair will entertain a motion considering Mr. Whistler’s dog.”

“I move that Mr. Whistler be ordered to remove his animal from the building!” shouted Owens.

“I second the motion,” said a red-headed woman in the crowd, someone unknown to Harold.

“We have a motion and a second,” intoned Aramante. “All in favor, signify by saying Aye.” Eight individuals responded. “All opposed, signify by saying Nay.” A larger and louder number of individuals responded. Aramante looked disgruntled. “The motion fails.” She firmed up her shoulders and directed a stern stare right at Harold. “It seems that you are in the clear, Mr. Whistler. _For now_. But if there are _any_ incidents in the future, we will be raising this issue again.”

Harold nodded curtly, hoping to depart that room as quickly as possible.

“It seems only fair to to me that Ms. Owens should get the same warning about Mitzi,” said Montez. “In fact, I make a motion to that effect.” Owens spun in her direction, eyes glaring daggers.

“I second the motion,” said Hansen.

“ _Fine_ ,” Aramante snarled. “Is there any discussion?” The room remained silent. “All in favor, signify by saying Aye.” The Ayes resounded throughout the crowd. “All opposed, signify by saying Nay.”

“Nay!” shouted Owens, softly echoed by the three residents standing around her.

“Motion carries,” spat Aramante, seething with disgust. “The meeting is adjourned.” Grabbing the HOA manual, she stomped off, Owens scurrying after her to complain.

Sighing, Harold slipped out among the rest of the attendees as unobtrusively as he could manage. It aggravated him no end that he now had to deal with annoyances like this. As he returned to his condo, Harold reflected, not for the first time this summer, that having access to so much money for so many years had spoiled him much more thoroughly than he had realized.

The last two months had forced a jarring readjustment in his daily life, one that still rankled. Some of his annoyances were, admittedly, rather pedestrian. He missed the opportunity to eat out whenever he wanted, including occasional fine meals. He regretted no longer being able to purchase any first edition book he ran across that tickled his fancy. And he was unhappy to be forced to live in clothes purchased off the rack. It was not simply a matter of style, it was the expert cut and luxuriant feel of the materials as well. He felt much less comfortable—less himself—out of his bespoke suits. (Although he supposed that was the point of a new identity.)

But most importantly, Harold had long become accustomed to living his life in precisely the manner that he wished. While he had never gloried in the wealth he had accumulated through IFT, that money had meant that he was not required to abide by any rules other than those he established for himself, a privilege that he had long taken for granted. That was no longer true, and he was not accepting the change with grace.


	7. August 5, 2014

As he stepped out the front door of the cabin, Lionel Fusco swallowed a gulp of coffee and looked around to consider his surroundings. Thick green foliage rustled in the breeze, hiding a plethora of chirping birds. He didn’t know enough about birds to pick out any of them by their appearance or by their song, but even he could tell that was a woodpecker trying to find his breakfast in a nearby oak tree. Lionel took a deep breath and inhaled the piney smell of the campground. No one would ever label him as a wilderness guy—or as an early morning guy—but this was kinda nice.

His ex-wife Bonnie’s cousin Dan—the only one of her relatives who had ever seemed to like Lionel— had suggested that Lionel and Lee travel upstate for a week’s vacation in the Finger Lakes, camping at one of the state parks near Ithaca, where Dan lived with his son Alan. No nature boy, Lionel had not been thrilled at the prospect. But Lee had pleaded with him, excited for the chance to go camping and to spend time with Alan, who was the same age, and Lionel didn’t have the heart to say no once he saw the hopeful look on his son’s face.

Fortunately, Dan had volunteered to reserve a cabin for the two of them at Robert Treman State Park, just outside of Ithaca, so Lionel had been spared the discomfort of spending his nights in a sleeping bag on the hard ground. In fact, he had slept like a baby the last two nights, once he had taken some Tylenol to soothe muscles that were protesting the unaccustomed amount of physical activity he had put them through.

Though he was not sure that he would willingly admit it to anyone but himself, he found he was actually glad to be here. Right now, although it was way too early in the morning to be out of bed, in his opinion, he was enjoying the peace, quiet, and fresh air. Hiking up the gorge yesterday had him puffing within fifteen minutes, but the scenery had been absolutely astonishing to view. And most importantly, Lee was having a ball. It did Lionel’s heart good to watch his son’s perpetual grin as he leapt into every new activity: stepping along the rock ledge under the waterfall until as missed handhold allowed the power of the rushing water to push him back into the swimming area, jumping off the diving board with a shout of glee, racing his cousin along the hiking paths.

It was truly wonderful to have the chance to just be with Lee; far too frequently, the demands of Lionel’s job—not to mention his work with Reese and company—meant that he had too little time to spend with his son. Right now, Lionel was treasuring the opportunity to watch Lee enjoy himself with no thought of anything but the moment.

Kids grew up way too fast these days, Lionel thought, and he had been especially worried about that being true for his son during the past year. Lee had experienced nightmares for several months after he was taken hostage and almost killed by an HR goon, surviving only because Shaw showed up just in time. In the immediate aftermath of the event, Bonnie had decreed that Lee was going to be staying with her for the foreseeable future. Lionel had been lucky to get her to agree to return to their regular custody arrangements in May, and that agreement had been accompanied by dire threats of what would happen if Lee was ever again put in danger because of Lionel’s job. Fortunately, it seemed that the combination of the counseling appointments that his parents had set up and time had helped Lee had recover from his harrowing experience; the boy was back to his normal, irrepressible self.

The upside of no calls from Reese and Finch was that Lionel had more time to devote to his son over the last few months. He had not wasted the opportunity; he tried to do something special with Lee almost every week. And this vacation topped them all. He was certain his son would return to the city with wonderful memories, as would he.

But what did the future hold? Three weeks ago he had learned that Reese was still out there, masquerading as a cop, for some reason that he hadn’t seen fit to explain. Knowing that, Lionel kept expecting a call on his phone, pulling him into a secret mission once again. In the meantime, the suspense was killing him.

* * *

Harold Whistler took a sip of his tea, looked out the window of the diner where he was finishing his breakfast, and sighed. It was inevitable—he couldn’t put it off any longer. He was going to have to start acting like a professor.

By this time, there wasn’t much “later” left. Faculty orientation was in two weeks. In less than a month, he actually had to start teaching. Which meant he should probably spend some time figuring out what his courses were about. Fortunately, he had received desk copies of his course textbooks, which meant that either there were standard textbooks used for these courses every term, or the Machine had gone ahead and made the selection.

Of course, the only reason that he knew about the textbooks was that he had finally broken down and bought a new laptop. He hadn’t been tempted to do so for the first few months in his new identity, but after three phone calls from his increasingly annoyed department chair, he had had no choice but start using his campus email. And since he was not a fan of typing more than extremely short messages on his phone, that meant purchasing a computer—which he was going to need to before starting the semester anyway.

Not that his university email offered much of interest. It consisted mostly of a great quantity of what Nathan had always referred to as “administratium,” those irritating bureaucratic requirements for which Harold had always demonstrated little patience. He intended to do his best to ignore as much of it as possible.

But he couldn’t ignore his class preparations, as in a few short weeks, he had to pass for an economist teaching in the Stern School of Business at NYU. More specifically, he needed to come across as an expert in high-frequency econometrics, a sub-discipline focused on algorithm-based computer stock transactions and the ethical considerations of that practice.

And somehow, he needed to pump himself up to teach business students, not a prospect that thrilled him. He did not have a very high opinion of business professionals. Some might consider that attitude to be hypocritical; he and Nathan had made themselves incredibly rich through IFT. But throughout all those years, Harold had remained an engineer at heart. Their company was all about creating new and useful inventions that improved people’s lives. Making money was no more than an unplanned for but beneficial side effect of the mental challenges that he took on and conquered.

He was certain that a high percentage of the business students he would be teaching were attracted to the profession mainly by the potential of earning a substantial salary. Somehow, he would need to cultivate a persona that didn’t appear to be looking down his nose at them, or at his colleagues in the Economics Department. Though he had experienced a few truly gifted teachers in the course of his education, Harold had never aspired to be a college professor. Those positions required spending far too much time on bureaucratic requirements for his taste.

But now that distaste was, as they say, academic. He had no choice but to try to make the best of the situation and fit in, so that he could remain invisible to Samaritan. He had spent the summer being an inert blob, but now the situation called upon him to take action. And that action would begin with his first trip to campus, when he started moving into his new office.

* * *

Sameen Gray swallowed her shot of cheap whiskey and slammed the glass on the bar next to the two that she had previously emptied, glaring at the large, heavily-tattooed man with long, stringy hair who had just taken a seat on the stool next to her.

“I like a girl who can handle her liquor,” he said in a deep voice, aimed to impress. Receiving no response, he pushed ahead. “You can call me Rocko.” Sameen didn’t spare him a glance. He tried again. “And you are . . . ?”

“Not interested,” Sameen replied, without inflection.

Rocko leered at her. “You came here tonight for a reason, sweetie. And we all know it wasn’t for the food. Or the fine liquor.”

Sameen rolled her eyes in annoyance, but said nothing.

“That’s right,” said Rocko, leaning in close enough that she could easily smell the alcohol on his breath. “Pretty little girl like you coming to the bar alone? You’re looking for some company. And I’m just the guy for you.”

“No thanks,” said Sameen, leaning as far away as possible. “Just let me drink in peace.”

Rocko got off his stool to stand within inches of her. “Oh, so you’re one of _those_ girls. Like to play hard to get, hmm?” 

“Not playing,” Sameen replied through clenched teeth. “Just not interested.”

Rocko chuckled. “C’mon sweetheart. I can make you feel _real_ good,” he murmured, lowering his head until his lips brushed her left ear.

Sameen stiffened, then turned to look at him. “I’ll bet you’re one of those guys who’s all talk and no action.”

“Never had no complaints,” said Rocko, puffing out his chest.

“Is that so?”

Rocko’s leer widened. “Let me show you.” Placing his hand alongside Sameen’s neck, he started pulling her close, intending to kiss her.

Sameen pulled herself out of reach. “Sorry. I’m outta here. Goodbye.” She set a ten dollar bill on the bar, slipped off the stool, and walked out of the bar. Rocko was on her tail immediately, admiring her ass as he followed her out the door and along the sidewalk, where she paused under a broken streetlight and turned to face him.

“All right, honey! Let’s get it on!” Rocko stepped close.

She shook her head. “Sorry, Rocko. You need to learn that when a woman says no, she means no.”

Rocko scowled. “Someone needs to teach you a lesson!”

Sameen smiled dangerously. “And I suppose you think you’re that someone?”

“You bet I am!” Striding forward, he grabbed her left arm in a bruising grip—then let go and staggered back when her right fist connected with his face. Tottering, he brought his hands up, then pulled them away to see the blood that had collected. “ _Bitch! You broke my nose!_ ” he bellowed.

“And I’ll do more than that if you don’t leave me alone,” Sameen replied, evenly.

Rationality was not Rocko’s strong suit, however. Angrily, he lunged at her again, but she easily sidestepped his attack and struck a blow to the back of his head as he went by, and had the satisfaction of seeing him collapse to the sidewalk, motionless. She watched for a moment to be sure he wouldn’t be getting up again, then checked his pulse. It was strong, so she rolled him on his side for safety’s sake, just in case he wound up vomiting, then walked off in the direction of her apartment.

Examining her wrist, she was sure she would be developing a colorful bruise by morning. None of the dresses that she wore for work had long sleeves that would cover it. Fortunately, however, she had developed enough makeup expertise in her job to know exactly how to camouflage the bruise. She had gained a great deal of practice in that art over the last few weeks—ever since she started hanging out at the Patio. Rocko was right about one thing; she certainly didn’t go there for the food, which was fair to poor in quality, and arrived so slowly that she was invariably well on her way to getting drunk first.

The drinks were cheap, though, and that was important, given her limited income. But if she was going to be honest with herself—and she usually was—she went to the Patio because it was a dive, and the clientele it attracted meant there was usually a good chance of getting into a fight. She’d been in three already during the last month—not including tonight’s action, which in Sameen’s view, hadn’t risen to the level of an actual fight. She’d had to perfect her makeup application skills in order to hide the evidence of those fights before heading to work the next morning. But it was worth it, because getting in a few punches helped temper the frustration that had been building since she had been forced to take on her current identity. As long as she had to keep dealing with this shitty existence, she was going to keep picking fights.

* * *

Detective John Riley was on vacation. His undercover stint had come to a successful conclusion; his work had allowed the NYPD to arrest a dozen YFB members, as well as taking down the man from the cartel who had been supplying the gang with cocaine. He would eventually be called to court to testify, but that was months in the future. His captain believed that it would be possible for him to work another undercover job before the trial, at which time the public exposure would mean an end to his usefulness for that type of mission. But he had given John three weeks off in order to decompress from the stress of two months undercover before launching him in his next operation.

So John was a free man—and hadn’t a clue what to do with that freedom. While he hadn’t exactly enjoyed operating as an undercover cop, at least he had a plan to guide his actions. Now he was completely adrift. And his discontent at not being able to prevent deaths in his current identify, rather than cleaning up afterward, was increasing by leaps and bounds now that he had nothing to occupy his time.

For lack of clear direction, he had finally settled on the idea of checking in on some aspects of his previous life as the “man in a suit”. He looked in on Han, and was heartened to find that his old friend was still playing xianqi in Columbus Park. He had retrieved one of the cemetery caches of money and identification he had established when he first started working with Harold and did not yet completely trust him. One late night, knowing that he was taking a risk he would be hard pressed to try to defend, he had even surreptitiously visited one of their safehouses to see if its contents were intact. Finding that they were, he was fairly certain the Samaritan had not managed to connect it to the team, but decided set up a surveillance camera in order to keep an eye on it for the foreseeable future.

Which, he supposed, showed that he was hoping that at some point in the future, he and the rest of the team could get back to working the numbers again. Years earlier, Harold had told him that he needed a purpose, and had provided him with one. John wanted that purpose back, but he couldn’t be sure if that was ever going to happen.

In the meantime, he still had a vacation to get through somehow. Ultimately, he decided to spend long hours taking walks around the city, covering a neighborhood or two in Manhattan each day. He told himself that he was hoping to run into situations where he could help someone out, so he could feel as if he was actually accomplishing something, and there may have been some truth to that thought. But he had to admit he was also seeking out familiar locations. While New York had once been a city much like any other to him—if bigger than most—it was now inextricably bound up in the purpose that Harold had provided for him. Often on these walks, he would turn a corner and be blind-sided by a memory of an encounter that happened as he worked a particular number.

Today, he spent the morning walking around the East Village. As he passed the Angel Wings Funeral Home on East 6th Street, he smiled and shook his head, remembering what had happened there the previous winter. It had been the third time he had rescued Leon from the consequences of his own poor choices—in this case, borrowing money from a loan shark, Peter Ellison. When it became apparent that Leon was unlikely to ever pay off his debt, Ellison had become impatient, and decided to make an example of him. John and Bear had arrived on the scene to discover Leon, his arms stretched above his head and his hands tied to a stair railing, while one of the Ellison’s goons smiled cruelly as he held a large knife against the cheek of the trembling Tao.

John had let Bear take care of Ellison while he knocked the knife out of the goon’s hand, then flattened him with a single punch. He turned to find Ellison lying on the floor with a snarling Bear standing on top of him. It had been a simple matter to use some of Harold’s money to pay off Leon’s loan, with all of the accumulated interest, after which a satisfied Ellison walked out of the funeral home, John hurling his goon onto the sidewalk behind him.

Then he returned to Leon, who was pale and sagging in relief, but verbose as ever. “I _knew_ you’d come! I kept telling them they’d better not try to do anything to hurt me!”

John sighed. “Leon, you have to start making better choices. Next time, I might be too busy to show up.”

“Oh, man, you wouldn’t let me down. I just _know_ it!” Leon insisted.

No point in arguing with a man incapable of listening, John decided. Still, he wanted to try to teach him a lesson, so he picked up the knife and placed it on a stair step just a little beyond easy reach for Leon. He slapped the man lightly on the cheek a couple of times, and said “That’s right, Leon. I’m _not_ going to let you down. You’re going to have to manage that yourself.” He walked out with Bear, turning a deaf ear to the man’s protests as he exited.

As John recalled these events, he wondered whether Leon had managed to survive on his own over the last few months. For all John knew, the irritating man had gotten himself into one too many scrapes, with no Machine and no John to bail him out.

With that gloomy thought, John headed toward the West Village. This part of the city held stronger memories for him than most, especially Washington Square Park, which he was now entering. Back in those early days when he was still attempting to uncover as much information as he could about Harold, he had tracked the man to a vendor in the park through a discarded paper cup tossed in the trash at the library. He had been certain that he had discovered Harold’s home, only to be startled when a red-headed woman had opened the door. In conversation, he had discovered that the woman had been engaged to Harold, and that she thought he had been killed.

Leaving the home, he had spotted Harold sitting on a nearby park bench, cup of tea in hand. Harold had admitted to spending time in the park just to watch Grace, and had explained to John how he had let her think he was dead in order to keep her safe from the government forces intent on maintaining the secrecy of the Machine and its operations. And of course, just a few months ago, Harold had delivered himself into the hands of Greer in order to gain her freedom. Now she was living under a new identity in Italy.

While thoughts of the past were going through John’s head, he paid little attention to his surroundings until the sound of a whine began to penetrate the fog of his memories. He glanced over toward the benches, and spotted a dog pulling against its leash, straining to run his direction. It was Bear! Next to him was a short man with glasses and spiky hair. Although he was looking off another direction, the tension in his jaw told John that Harold was completely aware of the cause of Bear’s agitation.

John strolled over, keeping in check the smile that threatened to spread across his face. “Beautiful dog. Is he friendly?”

Sighing, Harold turned his head to face John. “Yes. You can pet him if you wish.”

John knelt down in front of Bear, who eagerly began to lick his face. “Hello, boy,” grinned John, running his hands down the back of the dog’s head. “What’s your name?”

“Bear,” Harold answered, rolling his eyes.

John switched to scratching Bear behind the ears, to the dog’s immense pleasure. “Belgian Malinois, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Harold replied, continuing his pattern of monosyllabic responses. Clearly, he was hoping that John would give up and simply move on. But John hadn’t gotten where he was in life by letting a little resistance deter him. As he continued petting Bear, he sat down on the bench next to Harold.

“And what’s your name?” he challenged Harold.

Harold gave him a side-eyed glance. “Who’s asking?”

John extended his hand. “John Riley. I’m a detective with the NYPD.” John noted that Harold’s eyes widened a bit at that information.

After a few beats, Harold reached out to grasp John’s hand. Watching carefully, John couldn’t detect any indication that he was still bothered by his shoulder wound. Good.

“I’m Harold Whistler. I’m a professor at NYU.”

Well, that might explain why he’s here in the park, thought John, since NYU is so close by. Still, it wouldn’t surprise him if he was also coming to the park to torture himself with thoughts of Grace. Harold was the only man John knew who could rival him when it came to wallowing in guilt.

But there was also a practical reason. “I guess this is where you walk your dog.”

Harold nodded. “Most days we come here for lunch.”

John nodded toward the chess tables. “Do you play?”

Harold looked at him suspiciously. “A little.”

“I’m always looking for someone to play a game with. How about we get together for a weekly game? Say Tuesdays at noon?”

John could read the uncertainty in Harold’s eyes as he considered the invitation. That came as no surprise, given Harold’s customary cautious nature; undoubtedly, he would be more concerned about remaining safe under Samaritan’s watchful eyes than anyone else on the team. But John had carefully introduced them to each other in their new identities, so there was no reason for Samaritan to flag their meeting as anything out of the ordinary. And he suspected that Harold was feeling just as lost as he was.

But Harold was a stubborn man, and John knew that trying to push him on this would only raise his hackles. So he waited while Harold thought the matter through.

Finally, Harold lifted his chin with determination. “Tuesdays are fine, but I usually have my lunch a bit later than that. Shall we say 2:00?”

John smiled agreeably. “I look forward to it, Professor.” He leaned down to give Bear one last good petting, then straightened and walked off. He was _definitely_ looking forward to these weekly meetings with Harold. Even worse than the inability to save the numbers had been the separation from the friend he had rarely gone a day without seeing for over two years. This reunion was the first truly positive thing that had happened since they had been forced to part.

* * *

Meg Finnila pushed open the door of the New York Employment Office and walked in, surveying her surroundings. There were two other people sitting in the sparsely furnished waiting area. One was a dark-haired, scruffy-looking, middle-aged man who was scowling as he filled out paperwork on a clipboard. Meg imagined that he had been unemployed for some time. The other was an older woman, probably somewhere in her fifties, leaning back with her head resting against the wall. She was neatly dressed, but the expression on her face was one of dejection. Meg speculated that she had just recently lost her job, quite possibly pushed out because of her age.

Behind the counter was a young man—still young enough not to have escaped the ravages of severe acne. He looked up with a sullen expression as Meg stepped up.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, in a perfunctory manner.

“I . . . I dropped off my paperwork yesterday?” she replied, tentatively. “I was told to come back again today at 3:00 p.m.?”

“What’s your name?” he asked, in a perfunctory manner.

“Margaret Finnila,” she answered, timidly.

He looked at his screen. “Yes, yes. You can have a seat. My boss will speak with you shortly.”

Meg bobbed her head. “Yes, thank you.” She quickly scurried over to an empty seat as far away from the other two as possible, as she speculated about the purpose for which the Machine had placed her in this identity. In most situations, there was enough information to give her at least an idea of what the Machine had in mind, but that wasn’t true today. All that she had received were the details of the undistinguished background established for this identity. Meg had managed to graduate from high school by the skin of her teeth, having failed to earn a grade better than C in a single class. Since then, she had been employed in a series of mostly part-time, entry-level jobs, none of which she had managed to hold for longer than a period of nine months. The most complimentary comment any of her supervisors had provided was that she was usually pretty good at following orders. Usually, that was.

A door to a private office opened, and a tall, slim African American woman stepped out. “Ms. Finnila?” she asked. When Meg nodded, the woman smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Mona Ngugi. Won’t you please come in?”

Meg clutched her purse to her side and quickly stepped inside the office. “Please sit down,” said Ngugi, indicating a chair by the desk. As the woman walked over and sat down at her desk, mostly covered by several stacks of papers, Meg noted her tasteful black suit and neatly trimmed curls. This was a woman who radiated competence and control.

“I’m afraid that your problematic work history is going to make it rather difficult to find you a new job,” Ngugi said.

Meg looked down at her feet. “I know. But I can do better, if you’ll just give me a chance.”

Ngugi considered for a moment. “There’s a restaurant that is looking for a dishwasher.”

Looking up eagerly, Meg stammered “Y-yes, please! I can do that!”

“All right. Let me find their notice.” At this, Ngugi turned and walked over to a cabinet, opened the top drawer, and began rifling through the files. 

While her back was turned, Meg pulled out a pen, which was one that Harold had modified to take photos for a number a few months ago. She quickly snapped half a dozen photographs of the papers visible on top of the desk, on the theory that this could possibly be what the Machine was interested in. Slipping the pen back into her purse, she pasted an eager smile on her face as Ngugi turned back toward her, file in hand.

“Here we are. Ron’s Diner, on 34th. Can I let them know that you’ll be there tomorrow at 6:00 a.m?”

“Yes, I can do that!” Meg said, eagerly. “Thank you so much!”

“All right. I’ll need to you to fill out this form in the office, and leave it with the man at the counter. Take the second copy with you and fill it out before you arrive tomorrow.”

“I will! Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!” Meg was practically bowing as she backed out of Ngugi’s office. She grabbed a pen from the young man at the counter and quickly filled out the form, before dropping it off with a nod.

As she left the employment office, her phone beeped. Opening the new message, she saw it was an alert for another dog-grooming appointment, which meant that the Machine was providing her with information about her next identity. Evidently the current mission was over, even if she hadn’t managed to figure out exactly what she was doing. She would find a secure way to transfer the information from her photographs to the Machine, and then start in on her new assignment. It looked like Ron was still going to be short one dishwasher in the morning.


	8. September 2, 2014

Frances Nowicki walked through the entrance to Bloomingdale’s, iced coffee in hand and excitement barely contained. That excitement wasn’t about the makeover that she was about to get, or her upcoming job interview for a position as an assistant to the director of player personnel for the New York Mets that was scheduled for this afternoon. It was about was the fact that finally, after four and a half months, she was going to be able to talk to Sameen; the Machine had told her to do so.

She spotted her target as soon as she entered the cosmetics department. Sameen’s casual stance in the middle of the main corridor paralleled the boredom evident in her expression as she sprayed perfume samples in the faces of passing customers, who recoiled in dismay. Frances smiled as she sat down at the counter, sipping her drink as she continued to observe Sameen for several minutes.

Then a slim man with short blond hair approached Sameen, shaking his head at the coughing customers, their faces screwed up in distaste. His rectangular glasses and matching pocket square and tie reminded Frances of Harold, except for the color, or rather the lack thereof—black with small white dots stood in for what, for Harold, would have been a bolder choice of pattern or color.

“Certainly looking fierce today, sweetheart. Unfortunately, we hired you to _sell_ this stuff, not scare off the customers,” he scolded Sameen. Frances smiled to herself, knowing just how much that condescending tone must be grating on Sameen’s nerves. Her sullen expression indicated a animosity of long-standing between the two of them. “Lady over there’s been waiting fifteen minutes for a makeover. Now put on a smile and _snap to it_ , will ya?”

Sameen appeared to be gritting her teeth as she turned toward the counter, but her eyes widened in surprise as soon as she caught sight of the woman on the stool. Smiling coyly, Frances rotated her direction, crossed her legs, and winked. Sameen strode over to the counter. “Okay, this, uh, day-job thing? Not really working out,” she seethed.

“Sorry, Sam,” Frances soothed. “You need an identity. And you need to trust the Machine.”

“Wait, the machine put me in this silly-ass job?”

“It’s the only way to keep you alive and off Samaritan’s radar.” Frances favored Sameen, who fit quite nicely into her stylish black dress, with a hungry glance. “For what it’s worth, I really like the new look. You’re definitely an autumn.”

“I could stab you with my stiletto,” Sameen retorted, unimpressed. “Enough already. Now, when are we getting new numbers?”

“Keep it down,” Frances cautioned. “The Machine has its reasons. Stay in character,” she directed. “Follow the calendar on the phone I gave you. Check Angler, maybe find a match.”

“A match? As in a date?” responded Sameen, sounding even more horrified.

“Make it look good,” Frances advised. She reached over for a tube of lipstick, as her expression and tone turned flirty once more. “But for now, I need you to make . . . _me_ look good,” she said, unscrewing the tube. “New job interview.”

Sameen took the tube. “Just promise me John’s a barista.” Frances smiled and set her lips for the application of the bright red lipstick.

* * *

Lionel Fusco surveyed the crime scene. “Not the first corner boy to catch a bullet on these rooftops,” he commented to the uniforms and investigators gathered near the body. “This place is like a shooting range for gangbangers.”

“What brings you up to the Bronx, detective?” Lionel knew that distinctive voice immediately, despite having hardly heard it at all during the past few months. He turned to see John Riley striding toward him in a gray shirt and slacks, sporting even thicker stubble than he had during his “man in a suit” days.

“Last I checked, I was in Homicide. This here looks like a body.” He regarded Riley, challenge in his expression. “What’s Narcotics doing here, _detective?_ ”

Riley nodded toward the body. “Felix here was an affiliate of a street gang taking over the heroin trade.”

“Yeah? Well now he’s unaffiliated,” replied Lionel. “If he was dealin’, we didn’t find no junk on him. No bank neither.”

Riley knelt down and picked up the tool that was sitting next to the dead gang member. “Wire strippers. What’s this kid doing up here with a pair of crimpers?”

Lionel shrugged. “Maybe he was jacking cable. Another favorite pastime in this hood.”

“He didn’t even live in the building, Fusco.”

As John stood up, Lionel walked toward him. “Why don’t you let the task force conduct the investigation, huh, Crockett?” he challenged.

“It’s just a shame we got here too late.”

Lionel thought he noted a tone of regret in that remark. Finally, he had the chance to ask the question that had been puzzling him for months. He stepped closer to John, lowered his voice, and said “You and your old pals used to be pretty good at getting in front of this type of stuff. What are you doing fooling around in Narcotics? You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

John’s phone beeped, and he glanced at it before responding. “When I figure it out, Lionel, you’ll be the first to know.” He walked away, leaving Lionel to chew on that cryptic comment, reminiscent of their conversations during the first months they had worked together. Once again, Lionel was being left out of the loop.

* * *

The calendar alert had directed Sameen Gray to be at 1182 Sullivan Street in two hours. Left to her own devices, she would have probably ignored it, but Root had been insistent, which probably meant that it came from the Machine. Not that this fact made her eager to follow through, given the shitty existence the Machine had placed her in for the last few months. But she was curious, so here she was, wasting her lunch hour on who knows what.

The address proved to be a school; signs directed her into the basement auditorium for a seminar on “The Power of Positivity.” Sameen groaned internally, rolling her eyes as she picked up a brochure that promised to deliver “Your Key to Lasting Happiness in Just 3 Easy Steps.” This was going to blow.

Disgruntled, she grabbed an empty seat toward the back of the audience. This speaker wasn’t going to say a damn thing she was interested in hearing, so she didn’t bother to pay attention. A buzz on her phone offered a momentary distraction, an Angler alert about a scuzzy-looking blonde guy— “Romeo”—who wanted to meet her. Shaking her head with disgust, she declined the request, and steeled herself to be bored to tears for the next hour. She stared straight ahead, barely registering when someone sat down in the next seat.

“Is that your perfume?” Sameen started at the familiar voice and turned in surprise to see John sitting beside her. “I could smell you down the hall.” 

Sameen sniffed her shoulder and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Stupid day job.”

John glanced over at her. “Name tag’s a nice touch.”

Embarrassed, she ripped it off. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Calendar alert.”

She looked over in surprise. “Me too. Then why are we both here?”

“Because we’re all here for a reason, right?” proclaimed the speaker. Startled, Sameen and John both turned their attention back toward him in surprise. “Number three: Look for the positive in life.”

“This sucks,” said John. Sameen hummed in agreement.

Their commentary had caught the speaker’s attention. “Excuse me,” he intoned.

“Excuse _us_ ,” John replied, and the two rose in unison and walked out of the room.

As they reached the hallway, Sameen noticed something shiny on John’s belt, and pulled back his black leather jacket to reveal an NYPD badge. “You’re a cop?” she said. Now that just wasn’t fair! John didn’t reply. “Hey, at least you get to crack a few skulls, carry a gun,” she said, envious.

John turned toward her. “New job’s got me chasing junkies and bagging bodies after the fact,” he said, clearly disgruntled.

“Stupid cover jobs,” Sameen spat in agreement. “What are we doing? Because if our friend has a plan, I am _not_ seeing it!”

The hallway pay phone began to ring, the familiarity of the experience startling them both. They stepped close and John picked up the receiver. Both of them heard digitized voices. Sameen placed her brochure on the ledge so John could write down the message. “Dream. Tram. Foxtrot. Six. November. Mike. Up. X-ray. Kilo. Road.”

“Looks like we’re back in business,” said John. As he looked over at Sameen, she could tell that he was just as excited as her at the chance to do something meaningful again.

* * *

Harold Whistler walked into Washington Square Park with his dog, mulling over his debut as an economics professor. It had been a short one; only one of his classes met on Tuesdays, and since it was the first session, he had settled for simply introducing himself and directing the students to check the syllabus. In fact, the only thing that he had accomplished was bursting the bubble of the short-skirted co-ed sitting in the front row, crossing her long legs and sending a coy smile his direction. His statement that all grades were final had sent her stomping out of the room. He had to admit he had found that rather satisfying.

That small spark of victory had immediately been doused, however, by the arrival of Theodore Albertson, his stultifying department chair, whose mere presence was sufficient to raise Harold’s hackles. Albertson’s directive that Harold’s class be moved to a new room was quite reasonable, given that he only had about twenty students in a large lecture hall with more than two hundred seats. Maybe he would even be lucky enough to have it switched to a room that offered more modern technology—like a whiteboard, for instance.

But, of course, Albertson wasn’t finished. Evidently, he felt it necessary to seize the opportunity to cast aspersions on the “obscure” topic of Harold’s dissertation, despite the fact that he had taken the time to read a copy thoroughly enough to catch and mark every typo he could spot. Albertson had rather gleefully presented that marked up copy to Harold. Then, as a parting shot, he informed Harold that there was a “no dogs on campus” rule.

Not exactly a stellar beginning to his teaching career. But, in all fairness, he couldn’t complain, as his class preparations had been rather half-hearted. Truthfully, he hadn’t even committed the title of his class—“The Ethics of High-Frequency Decision-Making”—to memory. Much as Harold loathed the idea of teaching business students, he would need to start making more of an effort, if only to avoid suspicion.

Then he had been startled by a calendar alert on his phone, identifying a location for him to be at in ninety minutes. The Machine’s doing, he was certain. Well, he had no intention of complying. No longer would he do the bidding of his Machine, now that it seemed to have lost its moral compass. Instead, he dithered in his office and ate a leisurely lunch. Then it was time for Bear’s walk in the park, where Harold would meet John for their weekly game of chess.

Man and dog sat by themselves at a Washington Square Park chessboard for a few minutes before John appeared. He walked over, carefully eyeing every person and camera in their proximity, sat down, and removed the chip from his phone.

“How goes the day job, Detective Riley?” said Finch, as he made his opening move.

“Personally, I prefer my real job, Finch.”

“Professor Whistler, please,” he reminded John, with some asperity.

“We’re getting numbers again, Harold.” Startled by this pronouncement, Harold looked directly at John, who nodded. “We need to get back to work.”

Harold turned his eyes back down to the chessboard. “I’m no longer your co-worker, detective. I’m done taking orders from a computer. I thought I made that clear after it instructed us to kill a congressman.”

“It also helped us to save Grace,” John pointed out. “And now more lives need saving.”

Having done the math, Harold refused to be so easily persuaded. “I’m not sure that’s what we were really doing. I’ve totaled the lives we’ve saved against the deaths that we’ve caused, and I’m afraid we’ve been operating at a bit of a loss. People who would still be alive if we hadn’t interfered.”

“You don’t know that. What would’ve happened if we hadn’t intervened?”

“There is a larger power in play now,” he pointed out. “One that we are presently ill-equipped to face.”

“Samaritan,” John replied, with some heat.

“Please be quiet,” Harold cautioned, in a whisper.

“Here,” said John, pulling a folder out of his jacket and handing it to Harold. “I could really use your input on this one.” Harold stared at him for a moment before giving in and opening the folder to see a photograph of a man. “Ali Hasan. Owns an electronics shop in the Bronx. He’s good with computers. Kind of like you, Harold,” he added, hoping that the reminder of a conversation from the beginning of their mission would stir him back into action.

Harold remained unmoved. “If you, or Sameen, or anyone else attempt to intervene with these numbers, you will surely find yourselves dead.”

“Well, we have to do something,” John insisted.

“We have no resources, John. The library’s gone.”

“So we’ll get another place.”

“Don’t you understand they’re always watching?” replied Harold, getting worked up at John’s refusal to accept their current circumstances. We can’t even talk on the telephone. There is no sanctuary. You can’t just be the man in the suit. You’re a cop now. I’m a professor. That’s just the way it is.”

John tried once more. “We don’t need jobs, Harold. We need a purpose.”

“The world has changed, John. I’m sorry.” Harold grabbed his bag and stood. “ _Bleiben_ ,” he said to Bear, placing the end of his leash on the table in front of John. “For the time being, I think he’ll be happier with you.”

John looked up at his friend. “Well, if it’s not about helping the numbers any more, then what?”

Harold turned his head sharply to glance at the nearest camera. He turned back to John only for a second as he replied “It’s about survival, John,” then strode off.

* * *

John Riley and Lionel observed Hasan from their car, parked in Times Square.“So what’s this Egyptian guy have to do with my DOA?” asked Lionel.

“Felix was in a gang called the Brotherhood,” John replied. “Near as I can tell, they’re forcing Ali to build some kind of private phone network the cops can’t tap.”

“So they’re meeting in Times Square for the privacy?” the detective responded, sarcastically.

John looked over at Lionel. “For the people. There’s too many signals. NYPD can’t pinpoint who’s calling who.” He resumed his surveillance of the number. “Ali’s smart, but these guys are too.”

The young black man who had threatened Hasan this morning, whom John had managed to identify as Link Johnston, had approached him. John and Lionel listened in on their conversation.

“Old man.”

“The network should be up and running. But with all the tall buildings, the battery drains quickly. You need an extra battery pack.” Hasan handed the phone to Link.

“Dominic wants signal from the East River to the Hudson.”

“That will take a little bit more time. But you can check the signal up to—uh—five blocks east.”

“Stay here. I’m gonna call you in five.” Turning, Link issued one last threat. “This better work.” The man walked off.

Hasan pulled out his phone and looked at the screen, so John did the same, and saw a map of Times Square, with indicators for Hasan’s position and that of the phone that he had just given to Link. “Ali’s tracking Link’s phone. Keep an eye on him,” he told Lionel, as he exited the car. He strode over toward the sidewalk where Link was watching.

Lionel popped in on the link, saying “It looks like your guy’s sending a text.”

John glanced at his phone, and saw the string of letters, numbers, and symbols that Hasan was typing in. “That’s not a text,” he told Lionel. “That’s a detonation code.” Lengthening his stride, he saw Link entering the passenger side of an SUV. “Battery’s a bomb,” he said with urgency. “Ali’s not the victim, he’s the perpetrator.”

As the vehicle took off down the street, John raced after it. Nearing the front door, he jumped on the running board, shattered the window, and punched Link before the man had a chance to react. “Give me the phone,” he demanded. “The phone!” He leaned in the window and reached for it, but the driver grabbed his wrist. John punched him, grabbed the phone, let himself drop to the pavement in a rolling fall, then hurled the phone across the street and under a vehicle; the phone and the vehicle promptly exploded in a blaze of flames.

John watched the vehicle drive off. The Brotherhood was not going to take Hasan’s bomb lying down. It was time to bring him in for questioning, so they could figure out how to save his life.


	9. September 3, 2014

Lionel Fusco yawned, rolled his shoulders, and drank the last drops of coffee from his mug. Once again, he was working the extra-long hours he had become accustomed to since John reese first entered his life. He and John had been questioning Hasan throughout the night, both separately and together, but the man steadfastly refused to talk. He glanced at his watch. 9:07 a.m. John had been on his own with Hasan for the last forty-five minutes, so it was time for him to step in again. Tossing his empty cup, he opened the door and entered the interrogation room. He glanced at John, who shook his head to indicate that he hadn’t made any progress.

Time for Lionel to throw the next pitch. “You’re full of surprises, Mr. Hasan,” he said, turning toward the man theiy had in custody. “Turning your cell phone into a mobly-detonated explosive device. Where’d you learn that?”

John leaned in. “I’m guessing Egyptian military. Unit 777.” Hasan glanced up at him, but said nothing. John unlocked his handcuffs. “The Brotherhood is threatening you. We can help you, Mr. Hasan,” he said, sitting down. “But you have to talk to us.”

Hasan finally chose to respond, but in a tone that made clear he anticipated no useful help would be forthcoming. “I came to the police once. Gave you the serial numbers of the phones they purchased from my store. It did nothing. They know you’re listening to them; they know where your cameras are. They’re smarter than you.”

“This Dominic, he wanted you to build some kind of private phone network?”

“It doesn’t matter any more. You can’t protect me, so I protect myself—my store—my family. They threatened my son.” John looked up at Lionel. They both suddenly realized that since Link and the other Brotherhood member hadn’t been killed by Hasan’s bomb, that meant that his son was in danger.

“Where’s your son right now?” asked Lionel.

“Why do you want to know?” asked Hasan, looking over at him.

“Link isn’t dead,” replied John.

“What?” responded Hasan, in surprise.

“He escaped.”

Agitated, Hasan glanced quickly at both detectives. “How?’ he asked, and picked up his phone. John quickly grabbed his wrists. “Ben!”

“We’ll call your son on the way. Let’s go.” John pocketed Hasan’s phone as the three men rushed out the door.

As Lionel drove them to the store, John tried calling Ben on his father’s phone. The tension in the vehicle grew as three calls yielded no answer. They arrived at the shop to find the front door propped open and the contents in a shambles. John and Lionel drew their guns and preceded Hasan inside.

“Ben? _Ben?_ ” his distraught father called.

“Keep him back there Lionel!” said John, walking toward the back of the store, praying that he didn’t find a body.

“ _Ben?_ ” Hasan called again, pressing against the hand that Lionel had placed against his chest to hold him back. “Oh, no.”

“It’s all clear,” John announced. “He’s not here.”

“They took my son,” said Hasan, in a daze. His phone, sitting in John’s pocket, began to ring. John pulled it out and brought it to the stunned man, who swallowed deeply, then pushed a button to connect the call. “Hello?” 

“Hey, old man. You know who this is?” said Link.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, you took your shot, but you missed. Now I’ve got your boy. And you got till midnight to get the network up or he won’t be comin’ home. Don’t waste time goin’ to the cops. You know we see ’em comin’.” At that, Link hung up.

“What have I done?” moaned the worried father, in dismay.

“We’re gonna help you, Mr. Hasan,” Lionel assured the man.

“How?”

“By getting your son back,” replied John.

“You? Haven’t you done enough?” he accused.

John shook his head. “Not yet, I haven’t.” He handed his NYPD shield to a puzzled Lionel, directing the detective to “Keep an eye on him.” Time to do something unwise.

* * *

Sameen Gray’s phone rang. After a quick glance to see if anyone in the store was watching her, she answered it quietly. Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me,” said John. “I need you to drop the eyeliner , pick up a gun, and help me take down a criminal street gang.”

Sameen’s eyes widened. She glanced over to see Turk eyeing her with suspicion. “I’d really like to,” she said in a subdued voice, turning away from the floor manager’s view, “but that sounds like a bad idea.” 

“Yeah, that’s what Fusco says. I guess I’m full of ’em today.”

“You go off the reservation, they’ll find you,” she warned. “And if you go down, we all go down.”

John was resolute. “We have a chance to get out ahead of this one. I’m going in with or without you.”

Sameen hung up. God, it was tempting to go help John, but this was way too risky. However, it was also way too risky to let him go off on his own and do what he was planning. She glanced over at Turk again, and saw that he was still staring at her, so she busied herself cleaning the counter until he finally lost interest and walked away. She glanced at her phone. 10:12 a.m. If she could talk one of her co-workers into covering for an early lunch break, maybe she had a chance to stop John before things got completely out of hand.

Strategically placing herself behind a column that blocked her from Turk’s view, she called John back. “All right. Where is this going down?”

“A bar at 1085 Broadway, in about half an hour,” he replied. “Thanks for joining the party.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she replied. “Wait till I do something.” She snapped her phone shut, and walked over to a statuesque blonde who was putting away the materials she had just used for a customer makeover. “Brenda, I’ve got an emergency. Do you think you could cover for me if I take my lunch break right now?”

“Sure,” replied Brenda. “Just make sure you’re not in Buzzy’s line of sight when you leave,” using the nickname the sales associates applied to their floor manager. “He’d like nothing better than to chew us both out.”

“That’s for sure,” Sameen agreed. “Thanks.” She ducked out when Turk’s back was turned, and headed quickly to the parking ramp where she had left her car.

As she arrived on the scene, baton in hand, she was just in time to see John fire a flash-bang grenade through the window of the bar and then stalk inside. At least he had demonstrated enough sense to wear a balaclava, she thought. She heard gunshots as she approached, quickly followed by a body flying through the window and hitting the sidewalk. Shaking her head, she entered the bar to witness John grabbing a man by the throat and slamming his head on the bar.

“Last chance,” John growled. “Where’s Link?”

“Man, Link bringing in the Whale,” the man responded.

“The Whale?”

The man nodded his head several times, quickly.

Sameen had seen and heard enough. She raised her baton and cracked John over the back of the head. As he lost consciousness and dropped to the floor. “I told you it was a bad idea.” Glaring at the man John had been questioning, she continued “Unless you want the same thing, you’re going to take him out to my car.” He scurried to meet her demand, grabbing John’s arms and dragging him toward the door.

Sameen stepped ahead and opened the front door, cocking her head to indicate which direction the man should go. She unlocked her SUV and opened the passenger door, watching as the man struggled to pull John into the seat. Once he finished the process, and shut the door, she nodded. “Pleasure doing business with you,” she said. He ran back into the bar as she opened the driver’s side door and slid into the seat.

Turning the key in the ignition, Sameen sighed. It sucked to have to be the grown-up in this situation. Reese better clean up his act right away, because she hadn’t signed on to be his babysitter. Her life was crappy enough already. She glanced over at her temporary charge, still out like a light. Well, since this was her lunch break, she figured she might as well eat, so she headed toward a burger joint she knew of nearby. John still hadn’t stirred by the time she parked the car, but she decided she could safely leave Sleeping Beauty on his own in a locked vehicle for a few minutes.

By the time she returned to the car it had started to rain, so she turned on the wipers and headlights before pulling into the street. She soon decided that she was too hungry to wait to eat, in addition to having only a limited lunch break. Besides, it would be a few more minutes before Reese would be in any condition to participate in a conversation. So she quickly found a spot where she could pull over, then tore into her burger as she waited for him to wake up. 

Finally, Reese started groaning and opened his eyes. “What happened?” he asked, putting a hand to the knot on the back of his head.

“I saved your ass, that’s what happened.”

“I had things in hand, Shaw,” he protested.

“Yeah, things like a—uh—grenade launcher. You can’t do that any more, Reese.” She looked over at him. “Neither of us can. We get caught, we get exposed. And then it’s lights out.” Her phone buzzed; she picked it up to see another Angler alert from Romeo. “Ugh,” she said, hitting Decline. “No means no, asshat.” She set the phone back down. “I need to get back to work,” she told Reese.

“I might still need your help, Shaw,” he said.

“Did you not hear anything I just said?” Sameen replied in exasperation.

“Yeah, I did. But I’m also trying to save a kid.”

Sameen sighed. “You had to put it that way.” Putting the car into gear, she pulled out into the street.

* * *

Psychology major Kathy Connors, an NYU junior, walked down the hallway of faculty offices until she spotted Professor Harold Whistler at his desk in the visiting faculty office, paging through his dissertation. She leaned against the doorframe. “In her defense, she had to work quickly . . . Professor.”

Harold looked up at her in surprise, then rose and walked to the door. “One moment, please,” he requested, closing the door as she took a seat. “What brings you here today, Miss Groves?” he asked, returning to his chair.

“Your former associates, the Mayhem Twins. They’re back to trying to save people.”

“I’m aware,” he replied, non-committally.

“Then you’re also aware that they’re gonna get themselves caught or killed without your help.”

“I explained as much to John, though I’m not sure how long they’d survive even with my assistance.”

Kathy pressed the point. “I assure you the outcome will be determined if you don’t get involved.”

“And this advice is coming from you, Miss Groves, or from the Machine?” Clearly, Harold was annoyed.

“Now is not the time to be precious, Harold,” she scolded. “You don’t get to sit this one out. The world can’t afford to indulge your indecision.”

“Oh, I think I made my decision quite clear,” he replied with asperity.

“Sorry, you have to pick a side, because this is war,” Connors responded, her tone heating up. “And the thing we’re up against, it has virtually unlimited resources. Governments working unwittingly at its behest. Operatives around the globe protecting it. You know how many we have? _Five_. Six if you count the dog.” Harold leaned back. “You have a god in this fight, Harold. And she’s fighting for her life.”

“I wouldn’t know. She only talks to you, Ms. Groves.”

Connors gave him a look. “Just because you stopped listening to her doesn’t mean she isn’t looking out for you.” She glanced around the office. “This job, your identity, is her keeping you alive. She _has_ a plan, Harold,” she said, standing and leaning over his desk to emphasize her point. “But she needs you to sit up and pay attention.”

“To what, the numbers?” Harold scoffed. “In the face of such a struggle, saving one or two people . . . what difference would that make?”

“Every life matters. You taught me that. The numbers, our identities, they all mean something. It all adds up to something. All of this matters. We all matter.” She reached down to grab her bag and headed toward the door. Grasping the doorknob, she turned back to deliver a challenge. “You got your friends into this mess. The least you can do is get ’em out of it.” She opened the door and walked out, leaving him to think about what she had said.

* * *

Professor Harold Whistler had been rankled by Ms. Groves visit, and although he tried to distract himself working on class preparations, he found himself stewing about it for the next two hours. He had made his position perfectly plain to John, to the Machine, and now to her. How dare they expect him to just push all that aside and jump in to help them! But his defiance wavered as his concern for John and Sameen grew. He had long observed John’s tendency to jump in to save a number, throwing caution to the wind, totally disregarding his own safety,. And he had certainly never observed Ms. Shaw acting as a moderating influence. Did he really want to let his own stubbornness to stand in the way of his friends’ well-being?

Harold sighed and made his choice; he had to help his friends. He knew that John had been working with Detective Fusco, so the logical starting point was to call him and find out what had been going on. Lionel explained the situation and told Harold that he could find John at Hasan’s store in the Bronx, so Harold headed uptown. At the least, he expected that he could offer technical assistance to help solve the problems Hasan was having with the phone network.

When Harold arrived at the shop, he was able to walk in unnoticed, as John was in the back with Hasan, who was at his computer. He overheard Hasan saying “I must have this network up before midnight. I’ve gone over everything I can think of, but it still won’t connect.”

“Perhaps I can be of some assistance,” said Harold, entering the back room. Had he not become so attuned to John during the years they had worked together, he might not have noticed the twitch of a smile in the crinkle of John’s eyes and the corner of his lip. “Detective Fusco said I might find you here.”

“Who are you?” asked Hasan.

John looked right into Harold’s eyes. “A friend,” he declared. Yes, thought Harold. So much had changed these last few months, but not their friendship. Never that.

“Do you know anything about wireless network architecture?”

“A bit,” Harold replied to Hasan. “I think you’ll find I’m a quick study.”

“I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to track down Link,” said John, starting to leave.

“Detective. Whatever your plans, I urge you to be discreet,” Harold cautioned. “Our current circumstances require that we play by the rules.”

“So then I’ll find someone who doesn’t,” John replied, and headed out.

Harold watched him go, then turned his attention back to Hasan. “May I?” he said, nodding at the computer. Hasan nodded in turn, and vacated his chair to allowing him to sit. Harold examined the screen closely, and brought up additional pages of code. “How many nodes are in the network?” he asked.

“Honestly, I don’t even know,” said Hasan. Surprised at that answer, Harold looked over at the store owner. “I should’ve never agreed to build this thing in the first place.”

Harold turned back to the screen. “Look, why don’t we start over. Tell me how you constructed the network.”

“Maybe it’s better if I just showed you.”

A puzzled Harold followed Hasan up to the roof of the building. Once there, Hasan led him over toward the edge of the roof. “This is one of my routers,” he said, pointing to a metallic mesh box.

Harold knelt to take a closer look. “How large is your coverage area?”

“All five boroughs.”

“All five?” Harold replied, astonished.

“Yes.”

“Installing that many antennas would surely raise some suspicion.”

“That’s just it. They didn’t have to install them. The antennas were already there.”

Harold gazed across the nearby rooftops. Of course. “VHF antennas.” What a brilliant solution!

“You can still find them on most rooftops in the city.”

Harold huffed, impressed. Now that he understood how the network worked, his mind was bubbling with ideas that could potentially fix the problems. “Let’s get to work,” he told Hasan. The two men headed back down to the store, where Harold spent the next several hours asking Hasan questions and writing code. Midway through, Hasan stepped out to pick up a quick take-out dinner for the two of them. Harold ate and drank mechanically, his mind completely focused on solving the problem at hand.

Finally, just after 10:00 p.m., he was putting the final touches on his work. “Well, I think I may have found a way to fix your network.”

“How?”

“I’ve written a firmware patch that should allow the nodes to handle an increased number of connections. I”m uploading it now.”

Quickly, the screen began switching pink ‘Offline’ notices to green ‘Online’ ones, as the patch completed connections. “It’s working,” said Hasan, amazed. “The network is up.” He smiled at Harold. “You did it.”

“No, _you_ did, Mr. Hasan. You took an obsolete and forgotten technology and created a modern invisible communications network.”

Hasan’s smile melted. “I just need it to get Ben back.”

“Then we have little time to waste.” Harold nodded at Hasan’s phone. The store owner picked it up and dialed.

“It’s Ali. The network is up. You can use it.” Hasan paused, listening to Link’s response. “I gave you what you wanted. Now give me back my son.” Harold watched as the man became agitated. Clearly, he was not getting the answer he wanted from Link. “What? Hello?” He pulled down the phone and looked at Harold in dismay. “Now what?”

“Now we call John.” Harold took Hasan’s phone and began texting.

“You put a lot of trust in your friend,” Hasan commented.

Yes, thought Harold. Much more than you could possibly know. I have seen him do incredible things in order to save others, including me. “I do,” he told Hasan. “In all the time I’ve known him, he’s never let me down.”

Harold finished his text, sending John a link to connect to the mesh network. As soon as he could see that John had made the connection, he called him.

“Hello?” John answered.

“It’s me. I’m borrowing the gang’s mesh network. I’m sending you the location of the node they’re connected to. They should be within a few hundred feet.”

“I’m on my way. I’ll let Shaw know.”

“John. Remember to be careful,” Harold cautioned.

“Just like old times, huh Finch?”

While he could envision the smirk on John’s face, Harold refused to be cajoled. “Hardly, detective.”

* * *

John Riley had driven to the Smith Street node location on the map that Harold had sent, and spotted the Brotherhood’s SUV parked near the corner of 58th Avenue and Brown Place. Other vehicles were parked on the cross street, and given the young black men entering the house on the corner, he was certain that this was the place where the Brotherhood was organizing the Whale.

He dialed his phone. “Yeah?” answered Shaw.

“Where are you?”

“About two minutes out.”

“Good. The Brotherhood is operating at 643 Brown Place. You should be able to set up in one of the apartments in the brick building on the other side of 58th. You have the right equipment?”

“One deluxe sniper rifle, as requested.”

“Good. I’ll check in again in a few minutes.” Standing in the shadows a few houses away, John kept watch on the Brotherhood’s base of operation. He saw Shaw’s vehicle pull over near the brick apartment building, but gave her three minutes to select an apartment and get set up before dialing her again. “Shaw, you in position?”

“Yeah, at least until the owners come home from dinner.” John could hear her adjusting the rifle. “All right, I got eyes on.” Two men had emerged from the house.

John watched as the men entered an SUV parked in front of the house. “Copy. Stand by.”

“Now just remember, Reese, you’re NYPD. You go all Rambo, I won’t be there to bail you out this time.”

“I’m a reformed man, Shaw. Following the rules and keeping a low profile.” John watched as the SUV pulled out into the street. Suddenly, at the next intersection, a green semi sped forward and T-boned the vehicle, flipping it over on its roof.

“That’s your idea of a low profile?” Sameen commented, sardonically. John watched as Anthony, Elias’ right-hand man exited the cab of the semi and walked over to the flipped vehicle. “What the hell? What’s going on?” Sameen said, in surprise.

“Beats me. Appears to be some kind of traffic accident.” John traded nods with Anthony. “Looks like a gang dispute over drugs. The SUV was coming from that house. Which gives me probable cause to take a closer look.”

He could almost hear Sameen’s eyes rolling. “Got your back, detective,” she said. 

Four men exited the house, guns in hand. John watched as four precise shots from a nearby house put them on the ground, holding their knees and rolling around in pain.”

“Took care of your welcoming party. They didn’t look too friendly.”

Silently, John entered the house. Once inside, he could see that all of the light and activity was in a single room, its entry shaded by a hanging plastic sheet, a hulking shadow right next to it. He reached in and grabbed the throat of a man holding an automatic rifle. The shriek of frightened women’s voices accompanied John’s quick punch to the guard’s head, knocking him out. John grabbed the rifle as the guard slid to the floor, entered the main room, and immediately took down another armed man.

Outside, sirens began to wait. “Reese, your buddies in blue are getting close.”

“I have to find Ben.” He pushed back through the sheet of plastic, and opened a door, which revealed basement steps and a chair that held the remnants of what must have been duct tape bonds. “He’s gone. So is Link.”

“I got’em. They went out the back.” A pause, then she continued. “I can’t get a clear shot.”

In the meantime, John had left the house and run over to the SUV. “Me again,” he said to Link, followed by two punches to the man’s face before he pulled him out and dropped him on the curb.

“Time’s up,” said Sameen, as the sirens grew louder and flashing lights became visible. “Good luck, Reese.”

As John was leaning over and cuffing Link, two uniformed cops approached, guns drawn. “Down on the ground!” the first one shouted.

“Finally. It’s good to see you guys.” John stood up slowly, shield in hand. “Riley. Narcotics.” The uniformed man lowered his weapon.

John pulled up Link from the ground and handed him over to the policeman. “This is Link Johnston of the Brotherhood. Put him in your unit. He kidnaped this young man,” he said, nodding at the passenger side of the vehicle. “I need to call his father to let him know he’s all right.”

The officer nodded and took Link away, John walked over to Ben. “You are all right?” he asked. Ben bobbed his head, at a loss for words. John pulled out his phone and dialed.

“John?” Harold answered.

“Put Ali on,” John directed, then handed the phone to Ben.

A moment later, John heard Hasan as he said “Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Ben,” Hasan said, with great relief. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

“I’m okay. They destroyed the store.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re all right. That’s all that matters. It was never about the store.”

“But they’ll come back.”

“So we’ll run off. We _are_ the store, Ben. You and me. Just come home.”

Listening, John couldn’t help but draw a parallel to his own circumstances. Though Hasan and Ben would have to abandon the store, what mattered most was that they had each other. He and Harold had been forced to go into hiding by Samaritan. Now the Machine was contacting them again, and he hoped Harold would join in for those missions, but what mattered most was that the two of them had reconnected.


	10. September 4, 2014

John Riley and Bear walked briskly toward Washington Square Park. Something was up. Rather than waiting to meet at their regular Tuesday afternoon chess game, Harold had sent a text, via Hasan’s phone, asking him to come to the park this morning.

Shortly after entering the park, he spotted Harold sitting on a bench. John slowed his pace, and stopped when Bear took the opportunity to relieve himself by a tree. A surreptitious glance indicated that Harold was very carefully not looking his direction. When Bear was finished, the two of them sauntered over to the bench and sat.

After a couple of minutes, Harold started to speak, keeping his eyes focused straight ahead. “I think I know why the Machine chose this time to resurface. It wanted you to help the number, but it also wanted the number to help you.” He unzipped his bag and moved it over so that it was sitting between the two of them.

John looked off to the other side, reached down into the bag, then took a quick look at its contents. “That’s Ali’s mesh network. What about the Brotherhood?”

“I expect they believe the NYPD confiscated it. But just to be safe, I’ve augmented these phones with a rolling encryption algorithm. You and Sameen will be able to communicate without fear or anyone else listening. Including Samaritan.”

John pulled out one phone and pushed it in Harold’s direction. Harold turned to him with a look of surprise. “It’s not just about the numbers, Harold,” said John, looking him directly in the eye. “It’s about survival.”

Harold considered for a moment, then quickly grabbed the phone and stuck it inside his jacket. He sat still for a few moments, then with a final plea of “Be safe, John,” he started to rise.

John silently held out Bear’s leash, and Harold took it. “Bear. _Volg_.” The two of them walked off, leaving John to wonder whether Harold would ever be willing to fully rejoin the team. He had helped out this time, but it was clear that his crisis of confidence in the Machine was not over.

* * *

Eulalia Kelly smiled as she rode the escalator down to the first floor of Bloomingdale’s. She had just purchased a lovely evening dress to wear at tonight’s formal dinner. As an interim assistant director, she had barely made the cut for the staff members invited to the event that the Museum of Modern Art was hosting in honor of its major donors. She had one more stop to make before leaving the store, as the Machine had directed her to visit the cosmetics counter and pass on a message.

While walking over to the counter and picking up a lipstick tube, she observed a petite saleswoman who was struggling to construct a ribbon bow on a package with scotch tape. As Eulalia continued to watch with amusement, simultaneously opening up the lipstick, the frustrated saleswoman gave up and chose to attach the bow with a stapler instead. “Didn’t teach you knots in Girl Scouts?” Eulalia asked. She closed up the tube as the saleswoman turned around and recognized her.

“Are you checking up on me?”

“I worry about you, Sameen,” Eulalia purred. “I also have a black tie dinner tonight, and I need a new polish.” She walked over to the nail polish collection and began to pick out bottles. “Something bold. Oh, and you should check your calendar.” She eyed Sameen. “I think you have a coffee date.”

“No way,” Sameen responded, dismissively. “The Machine stuck me in this retail hell. There’s no way I’m letting it near my love life.”

“She has a reason for everything,” Eulalia admonished, shaking a pink bottle at her. “Even if sometimes it requires you to act like a well-adjusted member of society. Trust her.” She looked Sameen directly in the eye to emphasize her point.

After a few moment of silence, Sameen gave in. “Fine,” she said, in a flat voice. “Now, about that polish? You ready to try something other than black?”

Eulalia smiled. “Oh, sweetie,” she said coyly, “I’m open to anything you suggest.”

* * *

Lionel Fusco walked back to his desk, studying a folder related to his new case, a murder that had taken place in Chinatown. The body had just been discovered this morning, but the medical examiner estimated that the man had been killed several days earlier. Looking up, he was startled to see a young curly-haired man in a gray hoodie working on the computer at what had been Carter’s desk.

“Hey,” he said, dropping the file and walking over. “What are you doin’?”

“IT, dude,” the young man responded, casually. “Just setting up your partner’s computer.”

Lionel blinked in surprise. “Whoa, what do, what do you mean? What partner?”

“Some hotshot just made a big bust. Got promoted from Narcotics.” He looked past Lionel. “He can tell you all about it.”

Lionel turned to see John, back in his bespoke suit and carrying a box. “Detective,” he greeted Lionel.

“You?” Lionel said.

“You guys know each other?” the IT guy asked.

“We’ve met,” answered John.

“All set,” said the young man, as he finished upon the computer. “Make yourself at home.”

Lionel walked back to his old desk and John headed for his new one. As he approached it and set his box down, however, he appeared to regard it with some unease. Looking back at Lionel, it was clear that both of them were thinking about the desk’s previous occupant, and how wrong it felt that she was no longer here.

The hell with it, Lionel decided. In honor of Carter’s memory, he could bend. “Welcome to the 8th,” he told John, who nodded minutely in response.

Lionel sat down at his desk and reopened the folder he had been studying. His mind wasn’t really on the case, however. Here was John, back in his old uniform, and once again pulling in Lionel to help prevent violent crimes. It was everything he had been missing for the last several months, and yet . . . .

He shook his head in bemusement at his new—or should he say old?—situation. Be careful what you wish for, went the old saying. Lionel was sure he was going to be back in deep shit now.

* * *

Sameen Gray checked the time on her watch. If it wasn’t bad enough that she had finally agreed, at Root’s insistence, to show up for the coffee date arranged through Angler, Romeo was now half an hour late. It wasn’t as if she had anything better to do, but she was damned if she was going to keep sitting around waiting for some witless guy to finally show. She stood up and grabbed her purse, ready to storm off, just as a black van pulled up along the sidewalk café.

As she walked by, a blond, bearded man in the passenger seat called “Sameen?”

She stopped, turned, and looked at him. “Romeo?”

“I’ve been looking for a good match,” he replied, in what sounded like an Australian accent. “Thought you might not be interested.”

She considered him for a moment. “Just careful.”

“Us too. I hear you’re looking for some _real_ work.” The side door of the van slid open, revealing two men wearing black clothing and caps. From the equipment that they were holding, she could see that this must be a gang of thieves. “We need a good wheel man,” Romeo said, as the door closed. “Interested?”

“Absolutely,” Sameen declared. She walked around the front of the van, settled herself into the recently vacated driver’s seat, and peeled away from the curb. After a long, frustrating, tedious summer, things were finally looking up. The numbers were coming again. Yesterday she got to shoot someone— _several_ someones, in fact. Tonight, she was entering into a life of crime. It was almost enough to make her not mind her day job any more. Almost.

* * *

This afternoon, Harold Whistler had suddenly been struck by the realization that the typos in his dissertation weren’t mistakes, they were pieces of a clue. While Albertson had undoubtedly flagged all of them for the express purpose of annoying Harold, that action had actually proven to be quite helpful, for it allowed him to quickly go through the pages and write them all down, resulting in a list that read “WEAVERTD1192.8 M78D87320.”

Looking at this list, and noticing that it began with what appeared to be a name, it had dawned on Harold that he could logically break it into pieces that would constitute an author’s last name and a Library of Congress classification number: “Weaver TD 1192.8 M78 D87 320.” It had appeared that, once again, the Machine was sending him information in the form of a library call number, which probably meant that he could find the book at the university’s library. Connecting to the online catalog, he had determined that the TD section focused on technology. A few more minutes of searching had allowed him to identify the title connected to the call number he had been given: _An Illustrated History of 20th Century Engineering_ by Ruth Weaver, and to determine that he university library had a copy of the book in its Special Collections section.

He had hurried over to the library and located the book on the shelf. Since the final three digits were not included in the call number, he had deduced that it must instead refer to a page number. Opening the book and flipping to page 320, he had found an early twentieth century map of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, a forerunner of the current subway system. The next page had an engraving demonstrating part of the construction process.

Was the Machine trying to send him to a subway station? What would be the point of that? Unless . . . he had a vague memory of hearing that there were some IRT stations which had been closed off and abandoned due to more recent subterranean construction.

Finding an empty seat at a nearby table, Harold had closely studied the portion of the book focusing on the IRT, taking a few notes. Then he had stationed himself at one of the library’s computers, blocking the camera and logging in as a student, in the event that Samaritan might pay attention to the search he was about to begin. He had spent the next several hours uncovering information about IRT stations and their current status. The website nycsubway.org had proven to be especially useful; it held a treasure of historical maps and publications that provided him with valuable information.

The research had been time-consuming, but once he had determined that an IRT repair siding near City Hall had been closed in the 1970s due to construction of a portion of the city’s water main system, he believed he had tracked down the location that the Machine was attempting to bring to his attention. The next step had been to search city records for plans of the buildings that stood near that siding, in hope of determining the most likely location for a point of entry that remained accessible today. Ultimately, he had identified two buildings in Chinatown as possibilities, but the only way to find out certain was to check them out in person.

With his research was finally completed, Harold checked his watch and saw that it was 8:37 p.m. It was past time to take Bear out for his evening walk, and in any case, he would feel more secure with the dog at his side while he sought this entry point. He packed up his notes and headed home, stopping along the way to purchase a flashlight and a bolt cutter, as the odds were quite high that he was going to need them.

Entering his condo, Harold found Bear waiting at the door, leash in his mouth. “Guess you’re ready for your walk, boy, hmm?” he said, smiling. The Malinois woofed in agreement. “Well, I won’t keep you waiting any longer.” Grabbing a plastic bag and clipping the leash on the dog’s collar, he led Bear out of the building and into the park. As soon as Bear had done his business, Harold hailed a cab and the two of them rode down to Chinatown.

In a matter of minutes, they were walking along Doyers Street to check out the first building that Harold had identified as a possible point of access. He soon spotted a staircase leading to a lower level, which they followed down three flights. At that point they were in a storage area, and further progress was blocked by a locked metal gate. Good thing he had stopped to purchase some equipment, Harold thought, cutting the chain and letting it fall to the floor. Moving forward hesitantly in the darkness, he used the limited scope of the flashlight’s beam to avoid obstacles.

A short distance later, he and Bear reached an archway with plastic sheeting hanging down, and Harold pulled down one side to enter the space beyond. He shone the flashlight’s beam in all directions, marveling at the cavernous open space that lay under expansive arches. He could just note the decorative tiles on the walls and what appeared to be brass light fixtures, but the dim lighting of his flashlight clearly could not do them justice. There were various pieces of equipment and miscellaneous items that had just been left here when the station was closed, the most substantial of these being a subway car.

This location could definitely serve as a replacement for the library, Harold thought. There was plenty of space for everything they needed, in a spot that would be hidden from Samaritan’s prying eyes. Surely he could manage to tap into the third rail as a power source. He could wire the station to make the lights operational and provide electricity to run their equipment. He could set up computers and monitors, tying into underground cables and spoofing web addresses, so John and Sameen could be contacted by the Machine and research the numbers without fear of detection.

Yes, that much he could do, Harold thought. He was not about to rejoin the team; despite the fact that the Machine had made it possible for them to save Ali Hasan and his son, Harold was still not willing to trust it. But he knew that he would constantly worry about John and Sameen while they worked the numbers. If he could give them a home base, a sanctuary, he would be providing them with a level of protection. That was the least he could do for his friends.


End file.
